


We'll Be There to Defend One Another

by HarmonyLover



Series: Once And For All [1]
Category: Newsies (1992), Newsies - All Media Types, Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Genre: 1992 film plus Katherine, And so neither the marriages nor the relationships quite fit our modern paradigms, Awesome Jacobs siblings, F/F, F/M, I put ridiculous amounts of effort into historical accuracy, Labor Unions, M/M, Polyamory, Progressive Era politics, chosen family
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-15
Updated: 2018-12-29
Packaged: 2019-03-31 19:33:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 66,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13981842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HarmonyLover/pseuds/HarmonyLover
Summary: Sarah Jacobs is in love with Jack Kelly. She knows (though she shouldn't) that her brother David is also in love with Jack. Katherine and David love each other, too, in their own way. With Katherine's help, Sarah is going to make sure everyone gets to be happy.In other news, Jack and David uncover a conspiracy against the railroad unions, Katherine finds a new story in a familiar location, and Sarah finds herself drawn into the work of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union.(Or, the fic in which the author has historical notes at the end, and tries her best to explain the complexities of marriages and same-sex relationships in the 1900s - while also letting her characters push the boundaries of said relationships.)





	1. Sarah

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tuppenny](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tuppenny/gifts), [illinoise](https://archiveofourown.org/users/illinoise/gifts), [pennysparrow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pennysparrow/gifts).



> Hello all. I did a rewatch of the _Newsies_ film recently, for the first time in quite a while, and watched the musical on Netflix for the first time. It came over me how much I love these characters, still, twenty-five years later, and thus, this fic was born. (And Katherine is a wonderful addition, in so many ways!) 
> 
> I have to thank Nagaem_C and WickedForGood13, my dear friends. I never would have made it through this initial chapter without them, and they've been nothing but wonderful and helpful.
> 
> As it says in the summary, there _are_ historical notes at the end, for those of you who are curious. The cultural assumptions around what made a healthy marriage - and the assumptions around same-sex friendships and relationships - were quite different, so if the dynamics in this first chapter feel strange, the notes might help.

_November 1900_

 

Sarah Jacobs took a deep breath of the autumn air as she left the garment factory where she worked, grateful to be on her feet and stretching her limbs after twelve hours of bending over fabric, basting together seams, and running the treadle sewing machine. Thank goodness they were allowed to stand and walk around during their brief breakfast and lunch breaks; otherwise she wouldn’t be able to move at the end of the day. She was used to the physical fatigue by now, but her walk home was still one of the most pleasant parts of each day.

She turned right as she reached the bottom of the stairs, heading toward home. The cries of the street vendors and the noisy rattle of carriage and cart wheels were almost a relief, after the endless whirr of the sewing machines. At least the sounds could drift into the air, rather than bouncing off the factory walls.

Two blocks closer to home, she came across the little newsie who sold the evening edition in this neighborhood. Ever since the strike, she knew every newsie within a ten-block radius of their tenement building, and quite a few more besides.

“Hello, Freckles,” she greeted him with a smile. “How’s the selling today?”

Freckles, whose name was unquestionably apt, tugged at the cap that covered his bright red hair in a quick, adorably childish gesture of respect, giving her a cheerful grin.

“Hiya, Sarah,” he said. “Goin’ good, today. Lynchin’ makes a good headline.”

He proffered the paper, which held a large headline in bold type: “Boy Burned at the Stake in Colorado.” Sarah shuddered reflexively, but nodded.

“That’s awful, but I’m glad that it’s given you good sales,” she said. “I’ll have to read about it tonight. I’m sure Papa will have a paper. I’d buy a paper from you, Freckles, but I don’t have a penny today.”

The little boy, who Sarah guessed to be about eight years old, drew himself up and gave her a scornful look. “As if a single one of us newsies would take a penny from you, Sarah. When you an’ Mr. Kelly an’ Mr. Jacobs do so much for us already. Nothin’ doin.’ You takes a pape, if you wants one.”

Sarah smothered a smile, even as Freckles’ willingness to sacrifice a precious sale for her made her heart twinge. Jack and Davey were still “Cowboy” and “Walkin’ Mouth” to the older newsies, those who had known them well and those who were brave enough to try and use the nicknames as a means of being on equal footing. Among the younger ones, however, her fiancé and her brother were akin to heroes, and using the formal “Mr.” was a rare expression of deference. Little newsies were understandably mistrustful of most adults - but they knew that Jack and Davey were two of their own, and the ones who had led the strike to help all of them, over a year ago now. While Racetrack had become the new leader of the Manhattan newsies, and he and Spot worked together to keep Manhattan and Brooklyn allied and keep a larger watch over the other boroughs, Jack and David still frequently checked on their second family, doing everything they could to make sure that no one was hungry or cold or sleeping on the streets.

Sarah very much wanted to pat Freckles on the head, but it would have offended his dignity terribly, so she settled for squeezing his shoulder. “I’d never take a sale away from you, Freckles, but thank you for the offer. Here,” she said, reaching into her lunch pail, “are you hungry? I had some roll leftover from my lunch today.”

Freckles’ eyes brightened as he saw the fresh bread. “I wouldn’t say no, Sarah. Thank you.”

“Anytime,” she smiled at him, handing over the bread that she had deliberately saved for her small friend. “I have to get home, but I’ll see you soon.”

“Evenin’, Sarah,” he said, tugging his cap again with another one of those blinding smiles, and as she started walking again, she heard Freckles’ voice join the cacophony of the street, hawking the headline to the workers on their way home.

Sarah sighed as she continued toward home, her heart both lighter from her encounter with Freckles and heavier at the thought of Jack and David. In the months since the strike, David and Jack had moved on to new causes, working together to unionize some of the toughest sets of male workers - those who worked on the docks and in the slaughterhouses. They both had found work at the railroad yards during the day, and they were also working with the railroad union to try and achieve shorter hours and better wages. They had become a fearsome - and feared - team, with Jack doing most of the public speaking and meeting organization, while David did most of the writing and talked one-on-one to the quietest and most stubborn workers. When he did take the floor at a rally, people listened - his reputation as a thoughtful and eloquent speaker meant something, and while workers flocked to Jack for his charisma and his leadership, when David spoke, he was their conscience.

Both men were committed to the work with their whole hearts, but the organizing was exhausting and dangerous, and Sarah never stopped worrying about them, even as she tried to do her own part by joining the newly-formed International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union. If all of the male workers of the city were entitled to union rights, Sarah saw no reason why the same shouldn’t be true of the mostly-female garment workers.

Her musings and her feet had brought her home without conscious thought, and Sarah went quickly up the stairs of their tenement, calling out to her mother as she entered.

“I’m home, Mama!”

“Hello, sweetheart,” Esther said, coming to kiss her cheek and take her shawl. “You look tired; do you need to sit a minute before we finish putting supper together?”

“I’m all right,” Sarah said, kissing her mother’s cheek in return. “Just let me put on an apron and wash my hands, and I’ll take the potatoes.”

“Hi Les,” she greeted her youngest brother, kissing the top of his head as he sat at the table doing homework. “How was school?”

“Boring,” the eleven-year-old grumbled as he laboriously wrote out sums. “I’d much rather be selling papes.”

“We’ve had this discussion before, young man,” her father said to him sternly, sitting across from him. “You are going to finish school.”  

“David didn’t have to,” Les retorted sharply.

“ _David_ was much closer to being done anyway, not years away,” her father replied, “and I still wish he had gone back. You still have quite a few years to go, Les, and I won’t have you throwing away an education.”

Les grumbled some more, but he knew better than to press his father’s patience, and thankfully none of the noises he made were an actual argument.

“Hello, Papa,” Sarah said cheerfully, having waited for the end of his exchange with Les. She reached down to hug him. “How was work today?”

“Hello, dear girl,” Meyer said, squeezing her back. “Work went fine. Some of the younger men are learning quickly, doing really well, and it’s nice to see them becoming a coherent team.”

The arm injury that had plagued her father for so many months had finally healed thoroughly, and when he had applied for work at a new factory, the management had, to his surprise, hired him into a supervisor position, wanting him to train some of the new workers on the shop floor and make sure that they avoided dangerous mistakes and kept on pace. The younger men had taken to his mild manner and patient teaching, and because he was overseeing the work rather than doing the physical labor all day, his physical health had actually improved.

“Oh, Papa, did you happen to get a paper today? Freckles showed me the headline on my way home,” Sarah asked.

Her father nodded and reached under his chair, handing her the stack of pages. “That lynching is a bad business. Katherine and Denton have a story in today, though, about the railroad workers, and Miss Bly has a piece on the steam laundries.” He flipped through the paper and pointed out the railroad article, with the clearly printed byline “Bryan Denton and Katherine Plumber.”

“Thank you, Papa; I will read them after dinner,” Sarah said, placing the paper on her own chair before pulling on her apron and heading into the kitchen.

Not for the first time, Sarah thanked her stars that her father had been just as insistent about her education as he was about Les and David’s. She had been reading about extraordinary women since she was small - the women who were going to college, writing for the newspapers, working for the police and helping women prisoners, starting a new profession called social work, trying to outlaw alcohol so that women and children would endure fewer beatings. Miss Bly, who wrote for _The World_ , was just as famous for her investigative exposés as she was for her around-the-world race, when Sarah had been only eight, and Sarah always read her work.

As for Katherine, she was well on her way to being as serious a journalist as Miss Bly, much to Sarah’s delight. Sarah was deeply proud of the woman she now considered a best friend; she and Katherine had become fast friends during the strike, and Katherine’s coverage of the newsies had turned into a regular beat on labor relations and working conditions at _The Sun_. Katherine and Bryan Denton, the newsies’ other firm ally in the press, made sure that all of Jack and David’s current work stayed in the papers. The two reporters shared a firm friendship and a commitment to helping New York’s workers that went far beyond professional interest. Having become so close to the newsies during the strike, and to Jack and the Jacobs family in particular, neither Katherine nor Denton could imagine abandoning the working people of the city to their fate.

Sarah’s hands slowed as she scrubbed the potatoes, and she did a quick recount of how many were in the sink. There would be enough, and not too many, if she didn’t do any more. She knew the boys were coming back tonight, which she had been looking forward to - as hectic as their organizing could be, they weren’t always able to make it home for meals. Katherine wouldn’t be present for supper tonight, though as David’s fiancée, she was at the Jacobs’ dinner table more and more frequently. Her editor had forced her to step in for the new theater reviewer, and though the last thing Katherine wanted to do was go back to reviewing, she wasn’t in a position to say no when the paper’s new girl was out sick - and Sarah knew she was too good-hearted not to help a fellow aspiring journalist. It was difficult to be a woman in a man’s profession.

Sarah sliced the potatoes into fours with quick, efficient motions, letting them drop into the cast iron pot on the stove that was already filled with water. They would need to cook just enough to be soft. Her mother moved around Sarah to her other side, putting sliced cabbage into another pot with some butter, salt, and pepper.

Thinking about Katherine had led Sarah’s mind to another question, one she had been wondering about for some time, and as she watched her mother’s patient, loving hands over the food, she finally had the courage to ask.

“Mama,” she said quietly, “would you and Papa have been happier if David and I had gotten engaged to other Jews?”

The hands paused, and then her mother turned toward her with an astonished expression.

“Sarah, what on earth would make you ask such a question?” Anger darkened Esther’s features as a possible answer occurred to her. “Have some of the women at the factory been gossiping?”

“No!” Sarah reassured her swiftly. “No, nothing like that. David and I were talking about it, a couple of weeks ago. We’re both so grateful for how much you and Papa love Jack and Katherine, how accepting you’ve been - but we know it’s not what happens, in most of the community. And even before we were engaged, you never objected, for all of those months that that the four of us were pairing off. I suppose we were both just surprised, to not have either of you say a word.”

A month ago, the boys had surprised both girls with a restaurant dinner and a walk in Central Park, just as the beautiful autumn leaves were at their fullest and most brilliant. At a certain point in the walk, where the paths diverged for a short time, the two couples had split up, and both David and Jack had proposed to their respective girls. She and Katherine had, of course, said yes without question, and once the four of them met up again, the girls laughed and cried and held each other, and teased the boys about their setup. Sarah thought she had never had a happier night than that one; seeing the joy in Jack’s eyes and feeling it on her own face, seeing that same joy in David and Katherine, and _knowing_ , in her heart and her bones, that they were all meant to be family, had made her feel loved and secure in a way she never had before.

Esther paused before she answered, to stir the cabbage and make sure it wasn’t burning, and when she turned back to Sarah, her expression was solemn.

“It is a new world here, _dirast tokhter_ ,” she said, laying a hand on Sarah’s cheek. “We came here for a new life, one where our children would not be forced into unhappiness. We wanted a life where you could be free. Jack and Katherine fought beside you and your brother; they love you. Why should your father and I take that away from you, simply because they are _goyim_? Religion does not determine the truth of one’s heart. Your father and I want our children to be loved, above all.”  

Sarah hugged her mother for a long moment, then, feeling her eyes well up. “Thank you, Mama.”

The door clicked open again at that moment, causing both women to look up, and then Sarah looked down at the potatoes and gave an exclamation, whisking them carefully off the stove before they overcooked.   

“Hello everyone!” David’s voice rang out, and Sarah heard her father and mother return the greeting as she drained the potatoes and moved them into a bowl. Her mother had gone to greet the boys, and the cabbage was done, so Sarah moved that into a serving dish as well, taking both to the table, which Les had already set as she and her mother were cooking. Jack caught up with her as she was setting everything down, sliding his arms around her waist and smiling at her.

“Hello, love,” he said, kissing her cheek. “Good day today?”

“It was,” she answered, giving him a quick, warm smile. “Better now,” she added, brushing her own kiss onto his cheekbone. “Let go, sweetheart; I’ve got to get this apron off.”

Jack obliged, backing off and raising his hands in mock defeat, and she made quick work of the knots in her apron strings, pulling it over her head and hanging it on the hook in the kitchen before coming back to the table. Les was already seated and waiting. As had become their habit, she took the chair next to Jack, with her mother on her other side. Davey was just making his way to his own seat on Jack’s other side, and he paused to hug her and press a kiss to her hair.

“Hey, sis,” he greeted her affectionately. “Everything all right?”

“Good as can be,” she answered, hugging him back. “I take it things went well today? You and Jack seem to be in good moods.”

“They did,” Dave nodded as he moved around the table. “We were with the railroad union tonight, and everyone is pretty happy with the working conditions at this point. I think it’s going to take some time before we see shortened hours, though.”

“You’re right,” Jack agreed. “It was such a huge step when the union was recognized in the first place, and when no one could be fired for joining. Now that the work ain’t so dangerous, there’s a lot of people scared to press for shorter hours. They all admit there’s a fatigue problem, though, and that’s dangerous, too.”

“You boys will get there,” Meyer said. “The work you’re doing takes a lot of small steps, most of the time - most of these changes don’t happen overnight.”

David and Jack shared a grin, clearly remembering the brief two weeks it had taken them to get Pulitzer to give in to their demands.

“If it gets tougher, we’ll just get tougher with it, right?” Dave teased, quoting his friend, and Jack laughed, his eyes sparkling.

“That’s right. We won’t let anyone forget that, either.” And he reached over and pulled David into a one-armed hug before they both resumed eating.

Sarah laughed at them, along with her parents, and hoped that all of the love and affection she felt was enough to mask the quiet ache in her heart for them. She tucked the feeling away, promising herself that she would come back to it after this happy, loving dinner, think about it when her mind was clear and no one would notice her distraction.

* * *

She finally was able to keep that promise to herself, much later that evening. The food had been cleared away and everything had been cleaned. Jack had gone to the lodging house to check in with Racetrack and the other boys, after bidding her parents and Dave goodbye and stealing a private moment with her in the hallway.

“Be safe,” she said to him, standing in his embrace. “I know you always try to be, and there are plenty of the newsies to look out for you once you get toward the lodging house, but be safe, Jack. There are others besides the Delancys, now, who would be perfectly happy to see Jack Kelly get hurt. Thank goodness Snyder is in jail where he can’t hurt you anymore.”

“I know,” he said seriously. “I’ll be careful.” He slid warm fingers into the hair at her temples, cradling her face in his hands. “I’ll always come home to you, Sarah.”

And then, with a soft but passionate kiss that left her trembling, with a brief smile and one last look, he had gone, striding down the hallway with his usual determination.

Sarah shivered even now, remembering that kiss, and heat danced over her skin. She was sitting on her bed, in her nightgown, brushing out her long hair with careful, even strokes. Their small apartment was almost silent; she could hear her parents, David, and Les moving around as they, too, got ready for sleep, but those quiet movements were the only disturbance.  

She was alone, and with a deep breath, she took out that quiet ache of a feeling she had felt at dinner, looking at it from all sides as she remembered Jack and David’s exchange at the table.

This was one of those things she wasn’t supposed to know.

Of course, that was partly because she lived in a world in which women weren’t supposed to know _anything_ about desire, not the kind of desire she felt in Jack’s arms, and certainly not the kind of desire that might exist between two men.

But she did know. While Jack and David’s laughter and banter at dinner had been no different from any other evening, she recognized the warmth in Jack’s eyes when he looked at David, saw how tightly David’s fingers gripped his utensils after their exchange.

She knew other things, too.

She knew that Jack, when he thought he wasn’t being observed, would occasionally look at David with a longing that pierced her heart. He still touched David; Jack was a naturally tactile person and had a habit of being physically affectionate with all of the newsies, so he was even more inclined to be tactile with David, hugging shoulders and brushing arms and hands, sitting pressed against David shoulder to heel in the Jacobs’ small living room or in the close space of the lodging house. However, the look would only appear when David wasn’t too near, and when Jack was sitting alone, even in a crowded room.

She knew that David - her quiet, passionate, fiercely proud brother - could no more stay away from Jack than he could stop breathing, but that he sometimes withdrew into himself when the two of them were with herself and Katherine, becoming a more reserved and careful version of David than he was when he and Jack were working, or when they were surrounded by their rowdy family of newsies.

She knew these things and turned them over in her mind and heart, wondering _What if?_ and _Could they?_

She needed to talk to Katherine first. She trusted the other girl implicitly, and if Katherine didn’t reject her and dismiss the idea out of hand (and the cold pit in Sarah’s stomach at that idea made her pray that it wouldn’t happen), Sarah was going to need her help with the boys. Of all the things that Sarah knew, she knew with absolute certainty that David and Jack, each for their own reasons as well as mutual ones, would spend the rest of their days exactly as they were now rather than ruin any of the relationships that were so precious to them.

Sarah decided that she would meet Katherine on her way home from _The Sun_ the next day, and the decision brought her enough peace to let her drift into sleep. One conversation at a time.

* * *

The next evening, Sarah was breathless when she reached the street corner where she knew Katherine would pass by on her way home; she had been worried about missing the reporter and had hurried more than usual as a consequence. The winter chill in the air had quickened her pace as well, as it was cold even with her heavy shawl. She and Katherine often met here; it was an intersection point between her own working neighborhood of tenements and Katherine’s (or really, her father’s) neighborhood of wealthy mansions. While Katherine and her father had a relationship that was cool at best, Mr. Pulitzer would never throw her out; he cared more about avoiding social scandal than he did about opposing his daughter’s career - and after all, he had women reporters on his own staff, including Miss Bly. Sarah suspected that Katherine’s engagement to David might be the breaking point, however; to have his own daughter engaged to one of the strike leaders that had bested him must be anathema to Pulitzer. To her knowledge, father and daughter had barely spoken since.

Sarah stood and caught her breath as she waited, mentally cursing her corset. While she agreed with the dress reformers, she couldn’t bring herself to adopt their looser, more active styles of clothing. As a garment worker and a union member (and therefore someone who was always under suspicion), she needed every ounce of respectability she could muster.

She spotted Katherine coming down the block, striding confidently through the after-work crowds of men on her way home. Sarah felt her heart melt just a little bit, and a smile formed on her face; Katherine’s breezy confidence was one of the things Sarah loved about her.

“Katherine!” she called, raising a hand in greeting.

Katherine looked over at the sound of Sarah’s voice, and a matching smile broke out on Katherine’s face as she glanced quickly at the traffic and then dashed across the street.

“Sarah! Hello, sweetheart,” she said warmly, as the girls exchanged kisses on both cheeks and a tight hug. “I didn’t expect to see you today.”

“I know,” Sarah said, a slight apology in her voice. “I was hoping we could talk. I stopped at home after work, just so Mama wouldn’t worry, but then I came straight here. I wanted to make sure I caught you.”

“Of course we can,” Katherine agreed, still smiling, though Sarah saw the slight pucker between her brows that said she was worried. “Come on. Let’s go home, and you can tell me what’s bothering you.”

She reached down and took Sarah’s hand, tucking it into the crook of her arm, and Sarah felt her heart lift, the mental burden she carried momentarily feeling lighter as the two of them set off down the sidewalk.

* * *

Once the two girls had settled into Katherine’s room, hanging up their shawls and taking off their boots, Sarah curled against her friend in contentment, laying her head on Katherine’s shoulder.

“Sometimes I still can hardly believe you live here,” she murmured, taking in the soft carpet, the rich upholstered furniture, the thick mattress and fluffy pillows that felt like sleeping on a cloud, the dressing table that probably cost more than Sarah had ever seen in her life.

Katherine hummed, stroking her fingers through Sarah’s hair. “I’m not sure I would call it living. Home is about people, more than about place. Meeting you and David and Jack and Les taught me that. This place has always been emotionally cold - except when you’re here,” she said with a smile, pressing a kiss to the top of Sarah’s hair.

Sarah reached down and clasped Katherine’s free hand in her own. “I’m glad I could be here,” she said softly. “I don’t know what I would do without you anymore.”

“Well, who says you have to do without me?” Katherine said, her voice teasing. “We’re as good as family already, Sarah, and we’ll soon be family officially. I’m not going anywhere.”

“Family isn’t a guarantee of permanence, as much as I wish that were true,” Sarah replied, smiling sadly.

Sarah felt Katherine pause, felt her body tense up as she realized what Sarah had said, and then felt Katherine’s hands on her shoulders as the other girl turned to face her.

“Sarah, honey, what’s wrong?” she asked in concern, her eyes earnest and worried. “You know you can tell me. You are my best friend in the world; you can tell me anything.”

Sarah twisted her hands in her lap, all her nervousness from earlier back full force. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, and . . . Katherine, you know I love you, don’t you?” she asked in a rush, feeling as if the question had been pulled from her.

Katherine’s frown only got deeper, and she tucked a wisp of hair back behind Sarah’s ear with gentle fingers. “Of course I know. I love you, too.”

Sarah leaned over and pressed her forehead against Katherine’s, feeling weak with relief. “Oh, thank goodness. I needed to hear that before we talk about the rest of this.”

Katherine’s eyebrows went up, and the concerned look didn’t leave her face. “The rest of what? No, wait a minute.” She stood up and offered her hands to Sarah, who took them, and Katherine pulled both of them over to the bed. She laid down first, on her side, and Sarah took the other side of the bed, laying on her back so that she could look up at Katherine. Katherine propped herself up on one arm and let her other hand rest on Sarah’s shoulder. She dropped a soft kiss on Sarah’s forehead before looking into her eyes and saying gently, “Now. Tell me.”

“All right. I’ll try,” Sarah said, her voice shaking a little. “Do you . . . have you ever noticed . . . how Jack looks at David? Only when . . . he thinks no one is looking.”

Katherine bit her lip, casting her eyes down. “Yes,” she confirmed quietly. She looked up quickly, then, her eyes wide and anxious. “But Sarah, you know that doesn’t mean he loves you any less -”

“No, I know that,” Sarah said, her voice sure now. “I don’t doubt that Jack loves me, or . . . desires me,” she finished, her face flaming at saying something so bold out loud. “That wasn’t why I asked.”

Katherine considered her for a moment, her eyes bright and clear. “You think David feels the same way,” she said, her voice full of realization and something like . . . relief, Sarah thought, which was unexpected. “Oh, my poor boy.”

Sarah reached up and rested a hand on Katherine’s cheek. “Are you all right?” she asked worriedly. “This isn’t at all how I thought you’d react. I didn’t know what to expect, but it wasn’t this.”

Katherine smiled, nuzzling her cheek into Sarah’s palm. “Sarah, I _adore_ your brother,” she said frankly. “He is brilliant, he is passionate about everything he does, he has a lovely sense of humor, he is affectionate, he is gentlemanly. I love that he treats me as an equal, and talks to me as though I am an intelligent being - although, having spent so much time with your parents, I can see why he would never do anything else. I love that he encourages my writing; I love that we can work through problems together and inspire each other with new ideas. I love that he treats me as a friend and a confidant; no one in my life ever did that before I met the two of you, certainly no men. I am sure that he would say much the same about me. How many couples can say that they share all of that when they get engaged?”

“So with the two of you, it isn’t . . . physical?” Sarah ventured, hating the uncertainty in her own voice and feeling her cheeks heat again.

“I would dare to suggest that it isn’t for most couples, at least not at first,” Katherine said dryly. At Sarah’s shocked look, she twitched her shoulders with irritation. “Oh, I know we aren’t supposed to talk about these things, but honestly, Sarah. We are told nothing as women, taught to avoid men and their desires at all costs before we are engaged, told nothing about procreation except perhaps the night before our wedding, given no instruction on what to expect or what to do, and yet somehow are supposed to enjoy ourselves, be something other than terrified or overwhelmed?”

Sarah gave a slightly hysterical laugh. Surprise at Katherine’s audacity was mixed with amusement and yet more relief, the tension she had been carrying all day uncoiling. “I’ve thought the same for ages, actually. I just never expected to hear you say it. I was so afraid you were going to be disgusted with me for bringing all of this up. And I’m glad that you care for David so much, and he for you. I couldn’t imagine that you would get engaged if that wasn’t so, but it makes me very happy to hear it.”

Katherine shook her head, her red curls swinging, and smiled again as she looked down at Sarah. “I could never be disgusted with you, dearest. And for the record, I am not terrified of a wedding night with David, either - I know him too well to think that he would be anything other than gentle, and if he really wants children, of course I would give them to him - that’s part of what we agree to when we get married, after all.”

“But - and forgive me if I’m wrong,” Sarah said softly, “you looked relieved, before, when you realized what I meant about Davey and Jack. Why?”   

Katherine sighed, some sadness entering her eyes again. “Well, first and foremost, it explains a few things,” she said slowly. “I daresay you’ve noticed the same things I have - Davey gets quiet around Jack when the four of us are together, in a way that he never is otherwise. When the two of them are working, they’re both so absorbed in it that it doesn’t occur to them to hold anything back, and the same applies when they are with the newsies - they know that none of the boys are going to question anything they do or feel for each other. Even if they did, Spot and Race would put a stop to it quickly enough.”

“Yes,” Sarah confirmed. “All true.”

“It explains why David is sad, just once in a while, in a way I could never identify. To be carrying around those feelings for Jack, knowing how the rest of the world would see them, knowing the kind of danger it would put them both in, and thinking that he couldn’t talk to anyone about it, that . . . is a terrible burden,” Katherine said compassionately. “And now, at least, I _know_ , for certain, and I can make sure he knows that it’s fine, and he can talk to me if he needs to. And the relief . . . well . . .” Katherine picked at a thread on her bedcover, the first sign of nervousness that Sarah had seen in their conversation. “It’s terribly selfish of me, but if Davey doesn’t . . . _desire_ me, that way, then it might be easier.” A hot blush covered her cheeks, much as Sarah’s cheeks had flushed a few minutes before. “I don’t know why _this_ , of all things, is making me blush!” she said with a huff, half-laughing in her vexation.

Sarah covered Katherine’s hand with her own. “It’s as you said. We’re taught not to talk about these things, not even to think about them, and that we’re terrible people if we do. We’re not supposed to know that men desire women, any more than we’re supposed to know that men sometimes desire men,” she said, remembering her own thoughts from the night before.

“You _know_ what it’s like for women with children, Sarah,” Katherine said desperately, almost pleading with Sarah to understand. “I’ve wanted so much to be a reporter, and I am finally at a point where I’m accepted, and doing well . . . and all of that would go away, or at least be quite circumscribed, if I had children. I had hoped that Dave would be willing to wait, at least. I even . . . I even thought about going to see Ms. Goldman - she has been doing wonders to help women.”

That _did_ surprise Sarah, and she sat up. “Katherine! You really . . . you would really go to see her?”

“People are terrified of her because she’s actually willing to talk about all of these things with women, and more, do something to help them, so they aren’t having ten children in twenty years,” Katherine retorted, stubbornness and conviction firming her mouth and jaw. “We should have the choice. But I would have talked to Dave first,” she added, her voice softening. “I think he would understand; he knows how much my work means to me.”

“I think he would understand, too, and so do I,” Sarah reassured her, taking her hands. “I can’t imagine you without your work, and I’m sure David wouldn’t want to take that from you, at least not until you felt you could leave it.”

“Now, though, knowing how he feels about Jack . . . and we haven’t really discussed children. I don’t know how David feels about them, though I think he’d be a wonderful father,” Katherine said with a smile. “All you have to do is look at how he is with Les and the other newsies. But maybe it isn’t what he wants. To answer your question, though, no - I don’t . . . want David in the way I suspect you want Jack or Jack wants you, or the way those two boys want each other. And even when I realized that Jack was attracted to David, it didn’t bother me in the way you might think. Most of my worry was actually for you.”

Sarah gave her friend a grateful smile and nodded, understanding. After all, half of her worry today had been on Katherine’s behalf.

“But how is this affecting _you_ , dearest?” Katherine continued, squeezing Sarah’s hands in her turn. “You came to me with all of this, and you haven’t said a word about how you feel. Does knowing how Jack feels about David change anything for you?”

Sarah shook her head emphatically in the negative. “No. Only in the sense that it _hurts_ , to know this and watch Jack and my brother eat themselves alive over it, in the moments when they let themselves think about it at all. It’s so unfair. You and I, we’re allowed this -” and she gestured between them with her hands - “allowed to be loving and affectionate and warm, and best friends, and no one assumes that it is anything other than natural. David and Jack are all of those things, and yet because there is also desire between them, the world sees them as criminal and evil. How does desire _lessen_ all of the many things they are to each other? It makes no sense at all.”

“I agree with you,” Katherine said gently, “but you know what the church says. All desire is evil. Eve and the Garden. And desire between men is even worse because it doesn’t produce children. That is what most people have been taught.”

“Well, I don’t believe it,” Sarah declared, her chin going up and her eyes turning steely. “I refuse to believe that anything as - as _beautiful_ as what I feel for Jack, and what he feels for me, is evil. And I won’t dishonor either him or my brother by suggesting that they love each other any less than they do, just because they are two men.”

Katherine was looking at her with something like awe on her face, and Sarah suddenly felt self-conscious. “What is it?”

“You are . . . amazing, Sarah Jacobs,” Katherine said slowly. “You realize that you’re saying you don’t mind the idea that Jack loves both you and your brother - that he _desires_ you both. Most people would be horrified.”

The determination returned to Sarah’s expression. “Well, I’m not, and no, I don’t mind,” she retorted. “Jack has such an enormous capacity for love - all forms of love. He would deny it until his last breath, but it’s the truth. I know you know that. He took care of every single one of those newsboys as if they were all his brothers, for years. He stole for them, fought for them, organized a strike for them, took beatings for them, protected them as much as he could. He’s taken care of our parents as much as we have, as if they were his own, and goodness knows they’re the only parents he’s ever really known. He came into our family and utterly transformed David, in more ways than I can even explain. Why would I ask him to wall off part of his heart?”

“There’s no reason you should,” Katherine said promptly. “I do know what you mean, about his capacity to love,” she continued. “And he _would_ deny it - he’s spent so long guarding himself from being hurt that I don’t think he realizes how much affection he naturally gives to the people he cares about. But it’s still astonishing that you can see everything that is between Jack and David and accept it, Sarah. That takes . . . a breadth of mind and a depth of heart that is exceptionally rare.”

“Can _you_ accept it?” Sarah asked hesitantly. “I know you said that it isn’t the same for you and David - it sounds as though you are dear, dear friends but not really physically attracted to each other in that way. But I want to be sure, Katherine dear. There’s - there’s one more piece, one more thing I need to ask, and it’s not a decision I can make alone.”

“I _am_ fine with it; I promise, Sarah,” Katherine said emphatically. “I love your brother dearly, and he is a wonderful friend. He is my family now, and I am happy to be his family in whatever way he wants me to be. Whatever we decide to do in our marriage is our business, regardless of what the rest of the world thinks.  Whatever David feels for Jack, is for Jack. I know David cares very deeply for me, and that’s enough, even if it is a little more platonic than you and Jack are,” she finished with a laugh, nudging Sarah’s shoulder.

Sarah laughed herself at the tease, her cheeks pink again, but her face quickly sobered. “I wish there was better language for this, for all of these things that I’m feeling, and that I know the boys feel. Better words for my friendship with you,” she added quietly. “What language we have feels so inadequate.”

“Maybe there will be better language, eventually,” Katherine said hopefully, squeezing Sarah’s hand. “In the meantime, just do your best. What is this last piece that you are so anxious about?”

Sarah’s hand tightened around Katherine’s. She had known this was going to be the hardest part, and she could barely force the words out of her throat. “I want - I want the boys to be able to be themselves,” she whispered. “To be . . . together, if they want. Give them - give them permission, maybe? They would both be married; no one would suspect anything. They would be . . . protected, if we’re all careful. But I can’t - that has to be something we’re both willing to do, Katherine. It would affect your marriage with David, too.”

Sarah closed her eyes and waited. It was entirely possible that this was too much to ask, no matter how close they all were, and if Katherine berated her for this, it was going to shatter her.

She felt Katherine’s free hand on her cheek, turning her face gently, and when she opened her eyes, Katherine was smiling.

“It’s a wonderful idea, Sarah,” she said. “If David is willing to be with me and still let me be the person I am, the least I can do is give him the same.”

“Oh, thank god,” Sarah breathed, throwing her arms around Katherine. She felt tears prickle her eyes as she buried her face in her friend’s shoulder. “I hoped so much that you could understand. They would go on forever like this, if we let them, and it would break my heart. I just want them both to be happy - to be all of themselves.”

“I know,” Katherine said soothingly, stroking Sarah’s hair again. “I know.”

Sarah let herself cry for a few moments, needing the emotional catharsis after the hours of worry the previous evening and today had produced. She breathed in Katherine’s perfume, sank into the other girl’s touch, and felt immeasurably comforted.

“I’m sorry,” she apologized as she sat up, giving Katherine a wan smile and dabbing at her eyes with her handkerchief. “I - this has been worrying me so, and I’m so - grateful -” and here her voice wobbled, “ - that you don’t hate me, or seem to think any of this is crazy.”

“Of _course_ I don’t hate you,” Katherine said swiftly, giving Sarah another hug. “I could never hate you, any more than I could be disgusted with you. It isn’t possible. And while what you’re suggesting is unconventional, to say the least, it comes from a place of _so_ much love and empathy, Sarah. I love that your heart can hold so much. And I’m not so sheltered, myself, so I can hardly throw stones.”  

Sarah lifted her hands and placed them on Katherine’s arms, just nodding and giving a fervent squeeze of her hands rather than trying to find words. “Thank you,” she whispered.

“Of course, you realize that we still have to get Jack and David to _admit_ to all of this,” Katherine pointed out, some of her more customary, no-nonsense reporter tone returning. “We can hardly offer them this if they’re not willing to talk about it.”

“I know,” Sarah sighed. “I think I should be the one to talk to Jack - at least at first - but I’m going to need your help with David. I know my brother; he’s going to resist this, for all of the reasons he’s resisting it already and probably a few more besides. It’s not ‘right’; it’s ‘betrayal,’ it’s ‘unfaithful.’ And those are all of the arguments that will come _after_ admitting what he feels, if we can get him to admit it in the first place. Not to mention whatever he has told himself regarding Jack’s feelings.”

“I’ll be happy to help,” Katherine replied. “It might actually help him to talk to me; I have a little more objectivity - or he’ll think that I do, anyway,” she chuckled.

“He’ll also think that you’re one of the people he’s betraying,” Sarah said grimly. “He’s not going to be easy to convince. He’s so terribly stubborn.”

Katherine laughed. “I think that’s a trait he shares with his older sister.”

Sarah raised an eyebrow, but her mouth curled reluctantly at the corner. “Well, I’ve waited him out before.”

“You don’t think it will be as difficult to talk to Jack?” Katherine asked carefully.

“No,” Sarah said slowly, her tone thoughtful as she chose what she wanted to say. “He’ll be worried about how I feel, but he would never lie about this. And once he understands that I’m not angry, that asking about David isn’t a prelude to leaving him, I’ll be able to get him to talk to me.”

Sarah knew that Katherine heard most of what she left unsaid. Jack had been alone for so long when he was young that losing the people he loved, and who loved him, was probably his worst fear and the worst thing that could happen to him. Sarah was never going to let that come to pass. She would make sure that Jack knew there was no danger, that all he had to do was let her see this last, hidden part of his heart - and then, hopefully, the rest would follow. David wouldn’t be able to stand against all three of them forever.

 

**Historical Notes**

1\. “Boy Burned at the Stake in Colorado” was a news story on the front page of the _New York Times_ , November 17, 1900.

2\. The ILGWU was formed in June of 1900. They organized garment workers for several years, then successfully put together “The Uprising of the 20,000” in 1909, followed by “The Great Revolt” of 60,000 cloakmakers in 1910, and an alliance with the workers of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory after the deadly factory fire in 1911. The ILGWU was a major player in the union politics of the 1930s, and exists today as part of the UNITE HERE union. If you would like more information about the awesome female Jewish labor organizers of the turn of the century, try Annelise Orleck, _Common Sense and a Little Fire_. I’m assuming at the beginning that Sarah works a thirteen-hour day at one of the larger factories, though even that was a short day by the standards of the time.

3\. Nellie Bly, born Elizabeth Cochrane, is one of my heroes. She was an investigative reporter for the _Pittsburgh Dispatch_ and then for Pulitzer’s _New York World_. She got herself committed to Blackwell’s Island insane asylum for ten days, as a patient, and then wrote an expose about the terrible treatment of the mental patients that created an entire wave of reform around treating mental illness. She wrote another story about the baby-buying traffic in New York City, another about the work of female boxmakers, another about the city’s charity medical clinics for the poor (which were in some cases appalling), and many more. Later in life, she was a war correspondent in World War I, writing stories about wartime conditions in Austria. The around-the-world stunt was real, took place in 1889-1890, and made her famous - she managed to beat Jules Verne’s fictional 80-day timeline. The steam laundries piece (about the women who worked in them and the terrible working conditions) was also real, though I’ve been unable to track down the date on short notice. Some of Bly’s work is available in paperback form, in _Around the World in 72 Days and Other Writings_.

4\. Female dress reformers - the most famous of whom was Amelia Bloomer, who gave her name to the bloomers costume even though she didn’t create it - were often upper class. It was the only way that they could get away with dressing in such a shocking way. Working class/immigrant/POC women were not only the women most suspected of being sexual, but they were also looked at with suspicion because they worked, because they engaged in the public world of men, because they were seen as less proper and more vulnerable to moral corruption than middle and upper-class women. So Sarah is acutely aware that her dress and behavior are constantly scrutinized for any hint of impropriety or promiscuity. To be considered "ladies," women had to convince the rest of the world that they were virtuous, and dress was one way to do that.

5\. Information about sex was rarely, if ever, given to young women when they married. Occasionally, a mother would talk to her daughter about what to expect, the night before a daughter’s wedding - but sometimes only in abstract terms, and sometimes not at all. There are diaries from the nineteenth century in which women refer to what their mothers told them - or didn’t tell them - and how upset and scared they were. (Granted, it’s often in quite coded language - proper women weren’t supposed to talk about these things _at all_ , so even writing about it in a diary is a violation of morals.) Women often enjoyed sex less anyway, because they weren't taught anything about female sexual pleasure, and because men didn't always bother to learn. Only the most daring and outspoken of women were really willing to speak about sex and what it entailed.

6\. I’m pushing the envelope again here in Katherine’s comments about “agreeing” to have children, in terms of historical accuracy. For most women, it wasn't a case of agreement to have children in marriage so much as just resignation - they knew having children was part of marriage, and a lot of men weren't liberal enough to give them a choice about it. Let's not forget that this was also the period in which spousal rape wasn't even a legal concept. But David and Katherine are both liberal people for their time, and so I'm assuming they would both see it as more of a negotiable agreement than a non-negotiable expectation. (And notice I'm not, at least at this point in the text, ruling out the possibility of their having children. Plenty of couples still had children who were married for all sorts of reasons.)

7\. The omission of “women desiring women” is deliberate, here. The whole reason that 19th century women could have "romantic friendships" was because society in general equated women's moral superiority and heightened emotional feeling with a _lack_ of sexual drive. It seems contradictory, but people were so convinced of the evils of sexuality (outside of procreation) that in order to be as pure and loving as they were, it was assumed that women didn’t feel sexual desire. Especially not middle- and upper-class white women - they couldn’t feel sexual desire and keep everyone else morally pure at the same time. Part of their social superiority rested on the fact that their emotions were pure and not corrupted with desire. Working-class white women and women of color were, of course, more suspect and considered more likely to be sexually corrupt. Sarah knows that she loves Katherine, but she doesn’t see the desire in that relationship (yet, though she might eventually) because everything she’s been taught about women’s relationships says that they _aren’t_ sexual, though they can be emotionally romantic. She’s going far beyond typical beliefs, already, in her understanding of her own relationship with Jack and Jack and David’s feelings for each other.

8\. "Ms. Goldman" is Emma Goldman - political anarchist, suffragist, feminist, free love advocate (she believed that men and women should be able to engage in sexual relationships without the obligation of marriage, and that when a relationship wasn’t emotionally and sexually satisfying anymore, for either party, they should be free to move on), and one of the first birth control activists. She actually mentored Margaret Sanger, early on in Sanger’s career, and she gave lectures to working-class women about the rhythm method and spacing births, and then when diaphragms became available in Europe, she started smuggling them into the U. S., since they were illegal here. Most of society found her terrifying, for any number of the above reasons. (She also refused to wear corsets, though she didn't go as far as bloomers.) Goldman was eventually deported from the U. S. in 1919 for her anarchist politics. Sarah’s shock in the following line is more about Goldman’s political radicalism than her politics around women - as I hope I’ve made clear, Sarah and Katherine both agree with her on those issues.

9\. “I would have talked to Dave first” - Like in Note 6, I'm alluding here to the fact that there _were_ couples who actually chose to abstain and space their children, in the absence of any reliable form of birth control. The uncommon part of this is that Dave is working-class, and it was mostly middle- and upper-class couples who made this kind of decision, just because the information was more available to them (and the practice of abstaining was far more accepted in those classes, as well). However, David's parents also only have three children, so I'm working on the assumption that Esther and Meyer are smart and progressive enough to have limited their family size, and that David would know that. (It's also possible that Esther may have had miscarriages in between her three surviving children, which was certainly very common.) Melissa R. Klapper points out, in _Small Strangers: The Experiences of Immigrant Children in America, 1880-1925_ , that until Goldman and Sanger started their activism in immigrant communities, immigrant women often resorted to abortion as the only means of limiting their number of children - Klapper cites one case in which an immigrant mother admitted to having thirteen abortions, and then also said that she hadn't had the most, out of the women in her neighborhood. 

10\. Men were allowed “romantic friendships” up through about the 1850s, and then those friendships fell under suspicion as potentially sexual and began to be criminalized. It’s important to realize that the problem wasn’t so much that two men were involved, as that _any_ sort of sexual desire outside of marriage was seen as perverse and morally corrupt. As long as men’s relationships were “pure,” emotional and not sexual, then they were acceptable, even valorized - but society more generally began to regard that possibility as more and more unlikely, since men were presumed to be the ones most afflicted with sexual desire in the first place. Relationships between working-class men were, again, seen as more suspicious than those of middle- and upper-class men. Interestingly, the New York laws in the late 19th and early 20th century did not distinguish by gender; theoretically, both men and women could have been prosecuted for same-sex sexual relationships - but prosecution was rare for women, and conviction even rarer, while for men it became more and more common.

11\. For more information on 19th-century same-sex relationships, see the following: Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, “The Female World of Love and Ritual” (a chapter in _Disorderly Conduct_ ); Lillian Faderman, _To Believe in Women_ and _Surpassing the Love of Men_ ; George Chauncey, _Gay New York_ ; John D’Emilio and Estelle Freedman, _Intimate Matters_ ; Axel Nissen, _The Romantic Friendship Reader_. For more information on sexual relations, marriages, abstaining, and birth control in the 19th century, see Helen Horowitz, _Rereading Sex_ , and Linda D. Gordon, _The Moral Property of Women_.


	2. Katherine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, I have to thank my wonderful friends and betas, Nagaem_C and WickedforGood13, who talked me through this chapter and its time jumps and formatting with incredible patience - and all without being familiar with this particular fandom! They are amazing friends and saint-like betas.
> 
> This chapter went exactly none of the places I had originally planned, but a lot of things ended up happening, both plot-wise and emotionally, that I really ended up loving. I hope you do, too. :)

**Chapter Two**

 

The next morning, Katherine woke early. The pale dawn light was just beginning to peek through her white curtains, and despite the fact that she and Sarah had been up late, Katherine felt wide awake.

 _Well, that’s fine_ , she thought to herself with a smile. _I can accomplish a little more of my packing before work_.

She threw back the covers and pulled on the dressing gown that was on the chair next to her bed. She then padded over to the trunk that sat underneath the nearest window, unlocked it, and lifted the lid. She had been working carefully over the past month, accumulating things in the two trunks that sat in her room, things that would be helpful and practical when she left.

When she married David, she didn’t expect to ever come back here.

Her announcement of her engagement had not gone well, to say the least. Had it not been for her father’s almost paranoid aversion to personal scandal, she might have been out on the street already, for presuming to get engaged without his permission.

The night of her engagement to David, Katherine had let herself into the house with a smile, handing her hat and coat off to their butler, Mackenzie.

She had known her parents were going to be upset, but Katherine knew that she had friends - family now - who would keep her safe if the worst happened. Best to get the reaction over with, she had thought. It wasn’t as if they approved of her most of the time, these days.

_She walked calmly into the library, where her parents were, as usual, sitting over their after-dinner drinks. They stood when she entered._

_“Katherine,” her mother said. “Were you covering another theater show for the paper? We expected you for dinner.”_

_“No, Mother; I was actually at dinner myself. And I have something to tell you. I’m engaged,” she said calmly._

_The room was impressively silent for at least a full minute. Katherine waited._

_“Are you?” her father asked, and even the short phrase was enough to convey his fury._

_“I am,” Katherine answered, smiling a little just because she knew it would anger him further. “To David Jacobs.”_

_“To David Jacobs,” her father repeated slowly - dangerously._

_He walked forward deliberately, stopping only about a foot from her, before raising his hand and slapping her full across the face, making her head turn and her neck twist with the force of it. Her mother shrieked, and Katherine gasped, feeling the stinging and then burning across her cheek._

_“Are you out of your mind?” her father growled. “To David Jacobs? That working-class nobody who helped run the newsies strike? Who doubtless lives in filth in the tenements? What kind of life can he possibly give you?”_

_Katherine looked steadily into her father’s eyes. “He is Jewish, as are you,” she reminded him. “He works hard doing the very things that have made your newspaper stories so popular - unionizing workers, working against exploitation and corruption. He’s a good man.”_

_“He’s a pretentious upstart!” her father roared. “Do you think I have spent a lifetime trying to achieve financial and professional success, making sure that you had the best of everything, so that you could go back to living in the slums? Being a penniless, nameless waif?”_

_“You were an upstart, too, once,” Katherine said coldly. “And it was hardly the best of everything, Father. When I wanted to write, I had to do it on my own, didn’t I? No matter how I begged and pleaded, your own daughter couldn’t possibly work in your newsroom, even though you already had successful women reporters who could have taught me. And now you want to object to my being engaged to David? A man who comes from a background very similar to yourself? I realize that Grandfather had money, but you willingly left it all behind and started from nothing. Your hypocrisy really has no limits.”_

_Her father visibly tried to rein in his anger, swallowing several times before speaking again. “Katherine, if this is about some kind of revenge against me, becoming engaged to Jacobs because of his role in the strike, there really is no need. You can break it off, and no one will know. You have been doing good work for_ The Sun _, and perhaps it is time that I truly appreciated that.”_

_Katherine laughed scornfully. “The time was long before now, if you were going to. And believe it or not, I am not Machiavellian enough to orchestrate an engagement to David simply out of spite. I love him. Unlike you, he’s encouraged my work since the moment we met. He is kind and intelligent, he treats me like an equal, he is good to me, and I won’t give him up.”_

_Her father’s face contorted again, and he stepped even closer to her. “So help me, Katherine, if you persist in this madness, I will disinherit you. You will no longer be my daughter. I will throw you out of this house before I allow you to marry that guttersnipe!"_

_“Do it,” Katherine challenged him, and she was gratified to see him take a startled step back when she stepped forward. “I’m sure_ The Sun _would be delighted to run a story about their main rival disinheriting his daughter, because she’s in love with one of the newsie strike leaders who bested him. How Shakespearean! The paper has run out of ways to attack you for supposedly abandoning your religion. Mr. Lord would salivate over this, especially because it’s true. He might even give me a promotion, just out of gratitude.”_

_Her father went pale, though his anger didn’t lessen. “You wouldn’t dare.”_

_“I absolutely would,” Katherine said flatly. “You will let me go, Father. I don’t care about the money. I will only be here until I marry David, and after that I will just be Katherine Plumber Jacobs, reporter, and no concern of yours. Until then, let’s stay out of each other’s way.”_

She hadn’t waited for a response, and had swept out of the library, choosing the dramatic exit. She had expected to be followed or called back, but everything had stayed silent, and she had allowed herself a tiny smile of victory, despite her throbbing cheekbone, as she continued to her room.

The silence had continued over the past month, save for one or two appeals from Katherine’s mother. Her father had not spoken to her at all, apparently taking her at her word, and Katherine had found that it didn’t bother her in the slightest

Her mother had sought her out a day or two after the altercation in the library, coming to her bedroom one evening to plead with her.

_“Katherine, you don’t have to do this,” her mother said softly, sitting on her bed. “Why would you give up everything, for a man who has nothing?”_

_“What am I giving up, Mother?” Katherine asked bluntly. “A father who is willing to strike me? Who refuses to acknowledge that I am good at what I do? A place that has never felt like home? I can live without the luxury; I’m not afraid of that. You know, David has only ever thrown punches in defense of himself and those he loves. I can’t imagine him deliberately raising a hand to anyone he cares for.”_

_Her mother nodded, acknowledging the point, but still she pressed on. “Katherine, there are plenty of men of our class who would be good to you, who would let you continue to write. There is no reason to make yourself a social outcast over this man!”_

_“His name is_ David _,” Katherine replied through clenched teeth. “And that’s what you will never understand about this, Mother. I won’t be an outcast. I have found people who love me, who take care of me because they_ choose _to, not just because I happen to share their blood. I have colleagues, friends, at_ The Sun _who respect my work._ _With David and his family, I am loved unconditionally. David doesn’t ask me to be anything other than I am.”_

_Her mother studied her. “Well, I can see you are determined,” she sighed. She stood up, then hesitantly reached out to her daughter, folding her in a gentle hug. Katherine stiffened in surprise, but her mother pulled away before she could react. “Take the trunk with you,” she said, gesturing to a large trunk that stood under the far window. “It will help.”_

_Her mother left before Katherine could ask what she meant, so surprised was she by her mother’s small display of affection, perhaps even concern. But once she could move again, Katherine immediately went over to the trunk her mother had indicated, the large one farthest from her bed, and threw it open. She hadn’t bothered to look in it in years._

_It was a hope chest._

_Her mother had had a cedar lining put into the inside, and there were carefully packed piles of bedsheets, pillow cases, blankets, tablecloths, napkins, doilies, and towels. Many of them were beautifully embroidered or edged with crocheted lace. Katherine unfolded three beautiful silk and lace nightgowns, and several more in cotton. There were chemises, drawers, combinations, stockings, and numerous petticoats. There were a heavy brocade wool shawl and a pair of brass candlesticks that must have belonged to someone in the family. There was a satin baptismal dress that Katherine suspected had been hers. There were two small framed photographs of her parents._

_Katherine sat in front of the trunk and tried to breathe._

She had cried bitterly before sleeping that night, mostly for a gesture that felt far too much like too little, too late. She had known her mother loved her, in her own way, but like most of the rest of the world, Katherine Pulitzer, Sr., hardly ever went against her husband’s wishes, and Katherine had spent most of her life feeling lonely and without supports. To see such a physical reminder of her mother’s love, love that had done her almost no good when it came to finding her way in the world, was painful in the extreme. Had it not been for the fact that her mother had pointed the trunk out, had told her to take it, had _cared_ even enough to give her these things and not just leave them without an owner, Katherine might have been cynical enough to believe that she had put the chest together as just another social duty. (And she might have done. But her mother had still told her to take it, and surely that meant something. Not enough, but something.)

The hope chest had also given her an idea, however. The items contained therein would be a tremendous help to herself and her new family. Perhaps this was one last thing she could do for them, as Katherine Pulitzer.

There was a second trunk in her room, under the window closest to the bed, that for years had held mostly private mementos - her journals, some old school essays, her first attempts at embroidery, her first pair of dancing slippers. She had emptied it out two days after her conversation with her mother, and had started thinking about what she might really need and want to take with her when she left home. Since then, she had gradually been accumulating things inside it, thus far mostly books, which she knew were scarce and much-valued by the Jacobs. She packed away her own copies of _Jane Eyre_ and Jane Austen’s novels, _Woman in the Nineteenth Century_ , and several Dickens novels, as well as Malthus’ _An Essay on the Principle of Population_ and the first volume of _Das Kapital_. (She had cheerfully taken the latter two from her parents’ library, knowing they would never be missed.) She had also been tucking things into the small spaces left in the hope chest, strategizing about what might be useful for her new family and her new life.

On this morning, she went to her jewelry chest and opened it, taking out the top two trays and setting them on the bureau top so that she could see everything.

Most of the jewelry was completely unnecessary, and in fact, the sort of thing that would get one robbed and physically threatened by the poorest and most desperate people in David and Sarah’s neighborhood. However, there were a few things she wanted, and a few more that she was sure she could take without arousing her father’s ire. He did not know every piece in her jewelry box - she and her mother had bought some of them - and jewelry was a valuable asset in an emergency.

She carefully set aside a gold locket that held two photos - it had belonged to her mother, and had been a gift on her sixteenth birthday. The two brooches she wore most often were next, and two pairs of plain earrings, one silver, one gold. She still needed to look professional at work, and people would notice if her accessories were missing. News reporters were worse than a ladies’ sewing circle when it came to gossiping.

Then, smiling thoughtfully, she picked out a small gold brooch with pearls that she had found with her mother during a recent day of shopping. It would look beautiful on Sarah. She set aside a similar one with red garnets for Esther.

There. That was all she needed for herself. Moving more quickly now, she put aside three small pairs of diamond earrings. They were valuable pieces, but not the most valuable, and could be sold if it ever became necessary. She put everything she had collected into two cloth drawstring bags, save one pair of earrings for her current workday. She went over to the hope chest and set the bags on top of the clothing and linens, where they would be accessible to her, then shut the lid firmly and locked it. She went and reassembled the jewelry chest so that it looked as if hadn’t been touched.

Satisfied, she went to the large wardrobe that held most of her clothes and pulled out one of her work suits, a relatively plain brown walking skirt and jacket with a white shirtwaist. It was only the work of a few minutes to call her maid for help with her corset and pinning up her hair, and then be dressed and ready to go.

Mackenzie was just putting out breakfast on the sideboard when she went downstairs, and Katherine hastily swallowed a pastry and a cup of coffee before heading out the door. She caught the nearest streetcar that would take her toward Park Row, and seven o’clock found her walking briskly into the newsroom at _The Sun_. She wasn’t surprised to see Denton’s office door ajar; he was often there in the early mornings writing, before the newsroom got noisy and he left the building in pursuit of stories.

She rapped gently on the door, pushing it open as he looked up in surprise.

“Katherine! You’re here early,” he said warmly, smiling in greeting. “What’s the occasion?”

“None, except that I woke up early,” she said, smiling back. “Sarah was over last night until late, and once she went home, I was awake thinking. Apparently my brain never really shut off. I was awake again two hours ago.”

“You did make sure that someone went home with Sarah?” Denton asked in concern.

“Denton! Of course. Mackenzie sent one of the footmen with her. I would never let her walk all the way back home by herself, not so late,” Katherine said, slightly indignant that Denton would think her so irresponsible.

“Good,” Denton answered. “I just worry. I worry about David and Jack, too, but at least they’re more than able to defend themselves if need be.”

Katherine nodded, her features softening in understanding. “I know. I worry, too. I think we all do,” she said with a tight smile.

“Your father still hasn’t backed down about David?” Denton asked gently. He was one of the few people who knew the whole story of what had happened between Katherine and her father, and Katherine was grateful that he kept her confidence, like the friend he was.

Katherine shook her head. “No. I don’t expect him to, either. It doesn’t matter. I meant what I said about going to Mr. Lord, and he knows I meant it. He won’t interfere.”

“I’m sorry,” Denton said kindly, coming over and squeezing her shoulder in sympathy.

She shrugged, giving a quiet sigh. “Denton, my relationship with my father was broken long before this. His reaction to my marrying David is just the culmination of a much longer pattern. I’m long past caring what he chooses to think about me.”

Denton gave her another sympathetic smile, and Katherine shook herself, needing a change of subject. “So, what dragons are we slaying today?” she asked, her tone deliberately light, and Denton took the cue, going back over to his desk and digging through his pile of notes.

“Actually, I was hoping you might be willing to put together a follow-up story about The Refuge,” he said. “It’s been over a year since Snyder was ousted, of course, and he’s still in jail. There was a new head put in place, and supposedly there have been more checks and inspections, but who knows if it has actually gotten any better. It would be nice to have some actual reporting on the conditions.”

Katherine drummed her fingers on his desk, thinking. “I could ask around among the boys, see if any of them know anyone who is in there right now. Maybe I can get an appointment with the new warden, present it as an attempt at positive publicity after Snyder.”

“That’s a good idea,” Denton agreed. “He might even give you a tour - though of course, he’s going to try and restrict what you see. They always do.”

“I’ll have to poke around a little bit on my own, then,” Katherine said with a grin. “My favorite part of the job.”

Denton gazed at her pensively, clearly weighing an idea he wasn’t entirely comfortable with, judging by the set of his shoulders. “Do you think Jack would go on the record for you? Provide a comparative perspective?” he asked.

“No,” Katherine said emphatically. “Absolutely not. I wouldn’t even ask him. You should know better, Denton!”

“I should,” Denton said with a sigh, scrubbing a hand over his face. “It’s just - he’s a well-known figure, now, especially among union workers, and if he would actually talk about what it was like under Snyder, give a personal touch to all of the reports, it would go a long way toward showing whether actual improvements have been made, and create sympathy. You know how people respond to him.”

“I’m going to have to tell him I’m doing the story, just so he isn’t blindsided, and knowing Jack, he isn’t even going to want me to _set foot_ in that place,” Katherine retorted. “I won’t make it worse by asking him to relive the time he was there. He’ll barely mention it to any of _us_ , Bryan! What on earth makes you think he would talk about it to the entire readership of _The Sun_?”

“You’re right,” Denton said, holding up his hands in defeat. “You _are_ right, Katherine. I wasn’t comfortable with the idea of asking him, personally, but I can see the advantage of it professionally. I’m sorry.”

“Thank you,” Katherine said. “I can see it from the professional angle, too, but Jack is family, Denton. I’m practically his sister now, and he’s your family, too. Don’t ask this of him.”

“No,” Denton said, shaking his head, and Katherine could see his shoulders loosen with the decision. “Do the story, but keep Jack away from it.”

“I can get the story in other ways,” Katherine said confidently. “I’m sure I can. I will get a letter to the warden today and see if I can set up a meeting, then go to the newsies and see who I can talk to.”

“That sounds good. And finish up the story on the child workers who make artificial flowers. I’ll go over it one more time, and hopefully we can print it in the next couple of days,” Denton said with a smile. “It’s excellent work, and it should raise awareness about how exploited home workers are.”

“I hope so,” Katherine said soberly. “Thanks, boss. I’ll finish that up this morning, and go out this afternoon to see what I can find out about The Refuge.”

She gave Denton a smile and a mock salute before heading to her own desk, a small one shoved into a corner of the newsroom. She was lucky to have a desk in the newsroom at all, and she was fairly sure that Mr. Lord only allowed it because it would have been unseemly for her to share Denton’s office. The remainder of the story on the child workers went together quickly, and by mid-morning she was leaving the building again.

She needed to talk to Racetrack.

* * *

 

After taking the trolley up Broadway to Greeley Square, Katherine circled the park and then went on foot back toward 5th Avenue. On the days when he wasn’t selling at Sheepshead, Race could generally be found in these few blocks, selling papers and keeping a sharp lookout for any of the younger newsies or any runners from Brooklyn. It was a good spot for selling, frequented by lots of women shoppers who spent their days patronizing the department stores, as well as a myriad of store employees, servants, messengers, and delivery drivers. Katherine herself had shopped there many times, and it was one of the safest neighborhoods in the city - which also meant that Racetrack worried less about the little ones who checked in with him there.

Katherine finally caught sight of Race’s distinctive checkered vest in front of the Arnold Constable building, and she waved as she got closer, her face breaking into a smile.

As soon as Racetrack realized who she was, he gave her a matching grin. “Katherine! To what do I owe the pleasure?” he called gallantly, pausing in his greeting to sell a paper to a passing carriage driver.

“How are you, Race?” she asked as she came up to him, putting her arm around his shoulders and giving him a quick squeeze.

“Makin’ do, my dear newswoman, makin’ do,” he replied affably. “I had a good tip on a horse the other day, and the papes have been sellin’ pretty well. Thank ‘ee, sir,” he added as an aside, handing off another paper to a deliveryman. “What can I do for you?”

“Race, are there any of the boys who have recently left The Refuge, or who might know someone who is still in there?” Katherine asked.

Racetrack regarded her with a mix of pity and amusement, undercut with a soberness that she sometimes forgot he possessed. “Kath, there’s a reason Cowboy is famous for breakin’ outta that place. Most boys don’t come out of there on their own. Not unless they’ve got family, and sometimes not even then. Skittery’s little brother has been in there for three years.”

Katherine stared at him in shock. “Skittery has a brother?”

Race cracked a wry smile. “More than one, and a little sister, too, but Smalls got caught one too many times for ‘vagrancy,’ and they sent him to The Refuge the last time. His ma’s got three other kids at home, and Skittery only makes enough to support himself and give a little to her. Their pa’s long gone. His ma could ask to get Smalls out, and they would probably let him go, but you know she’s got to go to the warden to ask, and lose a day’s wages for piece work, and have someone else look after the little ones, besides. How’s she going to manage that?”

“Do you think she would talk to me?” Katherine asked. “I could feature her in the story, maybe find a way to help her, maybe take a message to Smalls for her. I’m going to try and get an interview with the warden. Maybe I can talk to Smalls while I’m there.”

Race considered. “It would be best to ask Skittery. He still sees his ma once every couple of weeks. He could see if she might be willing to speak with you.”

“Well, where does he sell?” Katherine asked. “I’m happy to go there and talk to him.”

“In The Bowery,” Racetrack replied. “Over on Rivington.”

“Oh, that’s not too far,” Katherine exclaimed. “Only a couple of miles. I can go over there before lunch, still - as long as you think it’s all right,” she added. She knew how protective Race was of his boys, and while Skittery was quite possibly older than Race and more than capable of making his own decisions, asking Racetrack’s permission mattered. He was the new head of the Manhattan newsies for a reason.

“You can ask him,” Race answered, squinting doubtfully. “I can’t promise you what he’ll say. And be careful over there, Kath,” he added. “Most of the people there are just workers like us, and won’t hurt ya - Spot and I know some good people - but there’s some rough customers, too.”

“Thank you, Race. It’s a start, at least,” Katherine smiled. “I’ll be careful, I promise. Even if Skittery’s not keen on speaking with me, or doesn’t think his mother will be, maybe I can still get a message to Smalls for them.”

“They would appreciate it,” Racetrack nodded, and his smile was warmer this time. It faded, however, as he gave Katherine a worried look. “Kath. Have you told Jack you’re doin’ this story, yet?”

Katherine shook her head. “It only came up this morning, and I haven’t seen Jack to tell him, but I will,” she promised.

“He’s not going to like it, Kath. For god’s sake, don’t just spring it on him, all right?” Racetrack’s face was anxious, and Katherine’s heart gave a pang. They were all so protective of Jack, still - he was still their family.

“I would never, Race,” she said solemnly. “I promise, I will tell him the moment I see him. I know he’s not going to be happy, but I would never keep this from him.”

Race’s expression relaxed, and he gave her a nod, slightly apologetic. “I know. We all do. Stay safe, Kath.”

“You too, Race. I’ll see you soon,” Katherine said. “Oh, here.” She reached into her handbag and pulled out an apple she had taken from her desk drawer. “Thank you for the lead,” she grinned, tossing it lightly into the air. Race caught it with an answering grin, and gave her a quick salute before resuming his sales.

* * *

 

Katherine promptly caught another streetcar to The Bowery, and made her way to Rivington Street. This was a neighborhood she’d only been in once or twice, and only since her acquaintance with the newsies - there was a mix of people and various kinds of businesses on these streets that would have made most members of her social circle turn up their noses in disgust.

Katherine found it fascinating, and also a little bit painful, to be here.

The Bowery did not contain as much of the abject poverty of the tenements. The Jacobs were the exception, there; they had enough to feed themselves every day (although sometimes only just), and they had made a home out of their three small rooms and their five-person family that was clean and cozy, unlike some of their poorer neighbors who lived ten or twelve or fifteen to an apartment. Those poor souls still struggled to put together the seven dollars a month rent, and sometimes had no food at all.

The Bowery was different. Poverty still existed here, but so did working people who made enough to subsist, saloonkeepers and shopkeepers and owners of cheap restaurants and flophouses. They weren’t making a lot of money, but it was enough to keep themselves going. Katherine knew that most of the objections of the upper-class to the inhabitants of the Bowery were in _how_ they made their money, not the fact that they made it. Sailors abounded here, fresh from the docks on shore leave, and they spent their pay liberally in the restaurants, saloons, and dance halls. They paid for a skinny bunk in a flophouse and then spent their nights with the prostitutes who lined the streets. While some of the women who employed themselves thus did it out of painful desperation, Katherine knew that others were highly sought after and made more than enough to live comfortably, though “good” society would shun them forever. Working-class girls and boys, some of them from the tenements, escaped here to have some “fun,” dancing until the wee hours. And there were others who lived here for the safety it afforded them - pairs of women who loved women and men who loved men, living openly among people who would be the last to judge them.

Of course, Racetrack was correct when he said that things could also be rough. The Bowery had its share, perhaps more than its share, of saloon fights, street fights, and ugly deaths - just last year, three women had killed themselves at McGurk’s, drinking carbolic acid, and the proprietor had been both savvy and disgusting enough to start calling the place McGurk’s Suicide Hall. The girls’ deaths had, of course, made the papers, and apparently McGurk’s was rife with illegal activities. Nor was it the only place that mixed illegal business with pleasure, or the only one where patrons got rowdy and violent after too much alcohol. People in The Bowery could be friendly, but it was best to watch one’s step.

Katherine found Skittery in front of the One Mile House tavern, doing a brisk trade in papers to the neighborhood proprietors and workers. His wavy brown hair and tall frame were easy to pick out, even if she hadn’t heard his voice.

In a way, it was amusing that Skittery did business here, of all places - he tended to look at the gray clouds of life rather than the silver linings, and while Katherine could certainly understand why, even more so now that she knew a little bit about his family, people in The Bowery at least tried to pretend that life was all gaiety. Maybe Skittery’s ability to see past their façades created some empathy between him and his customers.

“Hello, Skittery,” she greeted him as she came up to his side, giving him a smile.

Skittery did a double take, almost dropping the change he was handing a customer in his surprise.

“Katherine! What are you doing down here? This isn’t any place for a lady,” Skittery said anxiously.

“I’m a reporter, not a lady, remember?” she joked. Skittery’s mouth twitched, but his vigilant posture didn’t relax.

“Katherine, seriously, these aren’t your kind of people. I wouldn’t want anyone to hurt you,” Skittery said.

Katherine gave him a grateful smile but stood firm. “Were the newsies ‘my kind of people,’ before the strike?” she asked. “All of the people here are still _people_ , Skittery. I’ll be all right. I actually came to talk to you. Race pointed me in your direction.”

“Me?” Skittery asked. “What can I do to help you?”

“Denton’s having me do a follow-up story on The Refuge,” Katherine explained. “Race said your brother is still there. I want to help, Skittery. Talk to your mother? Maybe get a message to Smalls? Maybe the article would help get him released.”

Skittery rubbed  the back of his neck and looked down at his shoes. “Thanks, Katherine, but I don’t - I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he said.

There was something far too close to shame in Skittery’s voice, and it made Katherine’s heart hurt.

“Skittery, I want to _help_ ,” she said quietly, reaching out and touching his shoulder. “I want to understand how Smalls ended up there. I want to know why it’s so hard for him to come home. I want to know whether The Refuge has really gotten better, or whether it’s just Snyder all over again, with a different face. I want Smalls to know that his brother and his mother still love him.”

Skittery nodded, though he still wouldn’t quite meet her eyes. “We do,” he whispered.

“Couldn’t you see if your mother might talk to me?” Katherine asked gently. “Or if she’d really rather not, maybe I could just talk to you.”

“Do you really think it might . . . help get Smalls home?” Skittery asked tentatively.

“I think it might,” Katherine affirmed. “There are people in the city who help kids exactly like Smalls, but they have to know what’s happening.”

Skittery nodded. “I’ll ask Ma,” he said. “I don’t know if she’ll say yes, but if she doesn’t, I’ll tell you what you want to know.”

“Okay,” Katherine agreed. “ _Thank you_. Really. Can you write a letter for Smalls? I’m hoping to get to The Refuge in the next day or two, so hopefully I can get it to him.”

“I can write enough,” Skittery answered, a smile appearing on his face for the first time.

Katherine fished in her pocket and found a nickel, pressing it into Skittery’s hand. “For the stationery,” she smiled. “You know where to find me.”

“Thanks,” Skittery said roughly. “Thanks for trying to help, Katherine.”

“Anytime,” she answered, squeezing his shoulder again.

“Katherine,” Skittery added, as she was about to leave, and she turned back to him, lifting an eyebrow.

“If you talk to Ma, just . . . don’t think too badly of us,” Skittery said tiredly.

Katherine frowned, but Skittery turned away before she could question or reprove him.

* * *

 

The afternoon went swiftly. Once she got back to _The Sun_ offices and ate some lunch, Katherine wrote a note to the warden of The Refuge asking for an appointment and sent it by the afternoon post. She knew she wasn’t likely to hear back before the next morning, so she turned to drafting ideas for other stories that she and Denton had been discussing and had been too busy to put into motion. As Katherine left the newspaper for the day, tired but satisfied with the progress she had made, she was surprised to see David’s lean figure waiting for her, still in his work clothes, his wool newsboy cap covering his brown curls. His blue eyes lit up when he saw her, and she hurried over to him.

“David! Hello, darling,” she said, wrapping her arms around him and pulling him close before greeting him with a kiss. “I didn’t expect to see you today.”

David smiled at her before offering his arm, which she gladly took. “I have to go back, I’m sorry to say - we have a meeting tonight with the dockyard workers. But I wanted to see you, and I thought I could take you home for dinner - Mama has missed you, though I know you just saw Sarah last night.”

“Oh, that sounds lovely,” Katherine agreed enthusiastically. “I’ve missed your mother, too, and I’m always happy to see Sarah. Will you be able to stay?”

“No, just drop you at the door - Mama will have something I can take with me, I’m sure. I’m meeting Jack there - he wanted to stop in and say hello to Sarah while I came to get you, so we’ll leave from home together.”

“I have to tell him something that he’s not going to like, I’m afraid,” Katherine sighed. “I’m doing a follow-up story about The Refuge - what’s happened there since Snyder was removed.”

David slowed his stride slightly as he thought about that, a tightness appearing around his eyes. “Just to - what, show that it’s been improved the way it was supposed to have been?"

“That’s the hope,” Katherine nodded. “Of course, if it’s just as bad as ever, I’ll report that, too, though I’m hoping that’s not the case. I talked to Racetrack this morning, and he pointed me to Skittery, whose brother Smalls is still in there. Skittery’s going to put me in touch with his mother, too, and hopefully I can talk to her and get Smalls a message from them, at least.”

“He’s _not_ going to like it,” David muttered. “That’s probably an understatement.”

Katherine sighed again, squeezing his forearm in sympathy. “I know, sweetheart. I had to point out how upset he was going to be to Denton this morning, and then I had to defuse Race’s worrying. Believe me, I’ve been thinking about this all day.”

David nodded, thanking her silently with a small smile. “Well, let’s hope it has actually gotten better. That would be something, at least.”

“It would be,” Katherine agreed quietly. “David . . . do you know anything about what happened to Jack in there?”

David shook his head, his face grim. “Not really. Not anything he’s told me. Just guesses, and things I’ve pieced together from the few comments he’s made. Snyder tried to force obedience from all the kids by withholding food, and I’m fairly sure Jack stole for some of the others, especially Crutchie and some of the little ones. Snyder whipped him for it, I think. Maybe put him in isolation, too. And when Jack would try to get between Snyder and the younger kids, keep them from being punished, Snyder would hit him. Or whip him some more.”

“Oh, God,” Katherine whispered. “No wonder he was so desperate to escape, and so horrified by the idea of going back there.”

“Yeah,” David sighed tiredly, rubbing between his brows.

 _Sarah isn’t wrong_ , Katherine thought to herself. The need to protect and comfort Jack was surrounding Dave like an aura, and his frustration at his inability to do so was almost palpable. In this case, it was a frustration Katherine shared - they couldn’t comfort Jack about, or even help him cope with, something that he kept such perpetual silence around.

“Thank you for looking out for him, _tei-yerinkeh_ ,” David said softly, breaking the temporary silence.

“Of course,” Katherine said. “When is it going to sink in for you all that I am part of this family now?” She stopped, gripping David’s hands. “When is that going to be real for _you_ , dearest? Was the strike not enough? The night we got engaged? The morning _after_ our engagement? Even Sarah said something last night . . . David, when are you going to believe that I am yours?”

David’s face darkened at the mention of that morning. “I’m never going to forgive your father for that,” he said fiercely.

The morning after her beautiful engagement walk and the confrontation with her father in the library, Katherine had woken to find a light gray bruise running along her cheekbone. It was pale enough that she had hoped it wouldn’t be too noticeable, but it was definitely there, and there was nothing she could have done to cover it. She had considered a hat with a veil, but in the end had decided that leaving it alone might draw the least amount of attention to it.

_Both of her parents were utterly silent at breakfast, and Katherine fled to work as soon as she could, relieved to be surrounded on the streetcar by anonymous workers who made a point of not looking too closely._

_She had not, however, counted on David, who was waiting for her at the stop where she got off, wearing a smile that made Katherine’s heart ache with its gladness, only because she knew what his reaction would be when he saw her._

_“Good morning! I thought I would meet my beautiful fiancée and walk her to work,” David said happily as she approached, and Katherine smiled at him, because she truly was grateful to see him, this morning of all mornings._

_“What a lovely surprise,” she started, walking up to him. And as she had known he would, he almost immediately saw her face, his expression shifting to one of alarm._

_“Katherine! What on earth happened to you? Who did this?” he asked. He turned her face toward the light with gentle fingers, touching carefully along her cheekbone to make sure nothing was broken._

_“It’s not bad, David, just bruised,” she tried to reassure him. “Surely you’ve seen worse,” she tried to jest, though she knew it fell horribly flat._

_“I’ve seen worse - I’ve had worse - but that’s not funny. Katherine,_ who did this? _” he asked more insistently, his worry edging over into anger._

 _She sighed. “Father and I . . . had words about our engagement, after I got home last night,” she admitted tiredly. “Clearly, it didn’t go well. Although I_ did _win the argument, I’m fairly sure,” she added with a touch of pride. “He was blessedly silent at breakfast this morning.”_

 _“He hit you?” David said in horror. “I knew he could be a brute, but his own daughter? What kind of monster does that?” And David drew her close, pressing kisses into her temple and her hair. Katherine willingly nestled into his arms, finding comfort in his embrace that she had scarcely realized she needed, but suddenly felt desperate for. “I’m so sorry,_ tei-yerinkeh. _I’m so sorry. No matter what he thinks of me, he should never have struck you.”_

_“It’s all right, darling,” she reassured him. “It’s done. He’s never done it before, and he’ll never dare to again. I told him that he was free to disinherit me, but that if he didn’t leave us alone I would tell the whole story to Mr. Lord and let him publish it. Father will do anything to gain a business advantage, but he has an absolute phobia about personal scandal. He won’t risk it. He knows I meant it. I’m rather relieved, to tell you the truth. Once we’re married, I’m yours, and I never have to worry about him ever again.”_

_“The sooner the better, as far as I’m concerned,” David murmured. “I’m not perfect, Katherine, but I will_ never _raise a hand to you. I promise you that.”_

 _“I know,” she said, turning her head to smile at him. “I’ve always known that. Your gentleness with those you love is one of the things I love about you, sweetheart.” Then her mind caught up to something he had said, and her brow furrowed. “What does_ tei-yerinkeh _mean? I’ve never heard you say that before.”_

_To her amazement, David’s cheeks turned pink with embarrassment. “I’m sorry, I don’t know where that came from. It’s Yiddish. It means . . . ‘sweetheart,’ ‘dearest one.’ It’s . . . not a word I’m used to using, but it feels right for you.”_

_“It’s beautiful,” she said sincerely. “Don’t ever be sorry. I love it.”_

_David kissed her tenderly, then, and Katherine held on to the feeling of his embrace, the deep affection and respect and safety there. “Now, take me to Denton, and when you two have finished fussing like mother hens, maybe I can get some actual work done today,” she teased._

“You don’t have to forgive Father, dearest,” Katherine said, coming back to the present. “I haven’t forgiven him, either, and I doubt I will. But please tell me you believe that I have no intention of leaving you. Not after everything we’ve been through.”

“I _do_ believe you,” David answered fervently. “How could I not? You’ve been so strong through all of this, Katherine - so determined to be your own person, and you’ve chosen me, and us, over and over again. I’m still just amazed, sometimes, that you would leave your family, leave everything your father can give you, to marry me.”

“ _Love_ makes a family,” Katherine said firmly. “Don’t you forget that, David Jacobs. You are more my family than he ever will be.” She kissed him quickly, for emphasis, and then smiled and nudged him, getting him to resume walking. “Now, take me home.”

 

 

**Historical Notes**

1\. Joseph Pulitzer was indeed Jewish; he was the son of a wealthy Hungarian grain merchant. He ran away at 17 to join the army, and eventually served in the Civil War, afterwards working his way to St. Louis and making his fortune, then moving to New York. Katherine Pulitzer was one of his daughters, but she passed away at two years old - which is why, I am sure, Disney felt they could create a story for her. Pulitzer married a Protestant, Katherine Davis, and did not raise his children in the Jewish faith, though he still gave money to and interacted with the Jewish communities in St. Louis and New York. _The Sun_ , when it was still under the editorship of Charles Dana, did run a series of articles attacking Pulitzer for abandoning and/or denying his Jewish background - apparently he claimed to several interviewers and biographers that his father was Jewish but not his mother - therefore, in the Jewish tradition, meaning that he wasn’t truly Jewish. We know now, however, thanks to some wonderful historians and their archival work, that his mother was also Jewish, despite his claims. There is very little information available about Katherine Davis Pulitzer, Katherine’s mother, so her characterization is all my own. Pulitzer did have a horror of personal scandal - he was apparently, and rather ironically, a very private person. 

2\. Chester Sanders Lord was the managing editor of the _New York Sun_ from 1882-1914. He built a serious reputation for accuracy in reporting, only running stories when he was sure they were correct. He actually became famous for having the most accurate election results, sometimes before the candidates even knew who won.

3\. Drawers, chemises, combinations, petticoats, stockings - the many and varied pieces of underclothing worn by women at the turn of the century.

4\. " _Jane Eyre_ and Jane Austen’s novels, _Woman in the Nineteenth Century_ , and several Dickens novels, as well as Malthus’ _An Essay on the Principle of Population_ , and the first volume of _Das Kapital”_ : I assume that _Jane Eyre,_ Jane Austen, and Dickens are familiar to most people. If anyone is curious, I envisioned Katherine taking _A Christmas Carol_ , _Bleak House_ , _Hard Times_ , and _David Copperfield_ . _Woman in the Nineteenth Century_ was the major work of journalist and feminist philosopher Margaret Fuller. Thomas Malthus’ _An Essay on the Principle of Population_ was a major work of economics and also incredibly influential in the birth control movement (though Malthus himself did not support birth control after marriage, only later marriage in the first place). _Das Kapital_ is Karl Marx’s major treatise on economics and the problems of capitalism; only the first volume had been translated into English by 1900.

5\. Streetcars in this period were electric powered, as far as I have been able to find out; horse-drawn trolleys ceased to exist around 1883. Park Row was the home of most of the major New York newspapers in 1900. _The Sun_ building was actually right next to the gold-domed _World_ building that was featured in the _Newsies_ film.

6\. Children did indeed work at home making artificial flowers, usually under the supervision of their mother. One rough estimate I found said that a family would earn 8 cents for every 150 flowers made.

7\. Finding a location for Racetrack’s selling was not easy! The statue of Horace Greeley in Greeley Square has been there since 1894; the more famous one in City Hall Park was relocated from the  _Tribune_ building in 1916. I originally had Katherine walking back toward the Fuller Building, which was quickly renamed to the now-familiar Flatiron Building, and then discovered that the building wasn’t under construction until 1901, and not finished until 1902. However, the chunk of 5th Avenue that runs south from the Flatiron Building is now known as the Ladies’ Mile Historic District, and up until World War I was the home of many major department stores and famous, wealthy New York residents. Arnold Constable  & Co. was a massive department store there from 1825 to 1975. Because of the upscale nature of the neighborhood, women could actually shop there without being accompanied by chaperones or male relatives. Also, it’s only about three miles from Park Row - in other words, not too far to carry a heavy stack of papers.

8\. I’m playing a bit here with known history. The first juvenile court was established in Illinois in 1899, but there wasn’t a juvenile court in New York City until 1902. However, the House of Refuge had been in existence in the city since 1824. Historical records tell us that children who were sent to orphanages and houses of refuge could often be released upon the appeal of a parent - though I don’t know if that was the case specifically at the NYC House of Refuge. Parents sometimes even took their children to such places because they couldn’t support them or feed them, so the kinds of problems I am positing here for Skittery’s mother - the problems of a missing spouse, transportation, lost wages, and lack of child care - were very real. Rose Schneiderman, one of the Jewish activists discussed in _Common Sense and a Little Fire_ , was sent to the Hebrew Orphan Asylum with her sister, and it took their mother (who was supporting them all as a single parent) a year to save enough money to bring them home and be able to feed them. Her two sons were already at the asylum when she sent the girls, and she wasn’t able to bring her sons home for several more years. “Piece work” was any kind of work that got paid by the piece - artificial flowers, cheap jewelry, dolls’ clothes, and many other items.

9\. The Bowery neighborhood, in 1900, was actually a central location for gays and lesbians, and they had a highly visible presence and culture there - again, see George Chauncey, _Gay New York_. Another one of my tiny hints that Spot and Race are more than just professional allies! The Bowery was actually famous for drag balls, and there were male prostitutes as well as female ones. Because sex was an act that you took part in, and sex acts didn't define a sexual orientation, The Bowery was known as a place where people could have sex with a person of the same gender, and it wouldn't necessarily define that person as "gay" in the way we think of it now. (Not that it was exactly approved of, as Katherine points out, especially by the upper classes and the moral police, but it was a place where fluid sexuality was very much possible and accepted.) The Bowery Mission and the YMCA also provided social services in the neighborhood, and both are still in existence there. However, there were also a lot of saloons and a lot of cheap flophouses, catering to sailors on shore leave. The story about McGurk’s is true!  One Mile House tavern used to be on the southeast end of Rivington, somewhere, and was gutted in 1921 for retail space; there is now a new bar of the same name at 10 Delancey St. The Bowery had the first horse-drawn streetcar in New York, and the line was eventually made electric. For more on how the dance halls became central places of recreation and dates for working-class youth, see Kathy Peiss, _Cheap Amusements_ , and Beth Bailey, _From Front Porch to Back Seat_.

10\. “Afternoon post” - In NYC at the turn of the century, businesses received mail up to five times a day, while residential areas might have mail two or three times daily.

11\. Isolation cells (sometimes with shackles), lack of food and deliberate food deprivation, and various forms of corporal punishment were repeatedly uncovered during investigations of The Refuge over the course of its history.

12\. In case it isn’t clear yet, what I’m trying to build in David and Katherine’s relationship is almost what the ideal progressive partnership would have been for a late-nineteenth or an early twentieth-century married couple. They’re dear friends, able to confide in each other. They see each other as intellectual equals, and work together to create change. They’re deeply emotionally attached, love each other, want to support each other’s ambitions, and want to support their extended family as best they can. While sex and children _might_ be part of their relationship (and we’ll get to that conversation somewhere in here, I swear), those things aren’t central to how they function as a couple, nor what they see as driving their relationship. There were plenty of couples in this period who _did_ believe that sex and romance were central to marriage (and sexual compatibility becomes more and more central to relationships throughout the twentieth century), but just as many who saw marriage as a moral, familial, and political partnership, and some more who thought that marriage shouldn’t be part of a relationship at all. See Christine Stansell, _American Moderns,_ and Eric Rauchway, _The Refuge of Affections_. And also, of course, there were those in same-sex relationships who didn’t have the option of marriage, no matter what they thought of that institution. Finally, as I talked about in the previous chapter, limiting sexual activity within marriage was seen as acceptable and even morally superior by many, not least because childbirth was so dangerous for women. As with almost everything in this period, there is a wide range of behavior in both marriage and sexual relationships. Or, to put it another way: David and Katherine are the mostly-but-possibly-not-always-platonic, ridiculously affectionate BFFs who want All The Good Things for each other. :)

13\. Finally, I feel I should also say something about the kissing. :) Kissing in public, in 1900, was a very delicate thing. If you were a “proper” young lady or young gentleman, you didn’t kiss the person you were courting until after you were engaged. If you were kissing in a public place, it was supposed to be gentle and restrained, or more like a greeting - think of the cheek kisses that the French use as a greeting, for example, but then translate that to an engaged couple. Even a longer kiss would not have involved anything other than lips. What couples did in private, of course, could vary dramatically, and the social rules about public kissing get loosened in the city dance halls before the war, and then pretty much go out the window during the war. At this point, however, there’s still a lot of social etiquette around kissing, and so public kisses stayed within the realm of affectionate for most people. 

  
  



	3. Jack & David

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, I have to thank WickedforGood13 and Nagaem_C, who keep encouraging me, correcting my mistakes, and letting me ramble about all of the things this crazy fic does to my head (and about all of my feelings about all of these wonderful characters). Please do let me know if you are enjoying it! Comments and kudos are always appreciated. :)

**Chapter Three: Jack & David**

 

Jack raised his head as the door to the Jacobs’ apartment clicked open, and he felt more than saw Sarah do the same. The next moment, David and Katherine entered, relaxed and happy, and Jack felt his own shoulders relax, his level of contentment grow.

He was always aware, in a corner of his mind, when a member of his extended family wasn’t accounted for, when he didn’t know if they were at least nominally safe and sheltered. With David and Sarah, it was almost like a sixth sense, but it included others, too. Crutchie. Katherine. Les. Racetrack. There were years of his life when he could have told you where every newsie in Manhattan was on any given night.

 _Family._ That was still a concept that he marveled at.

It had crept up on him. For all that he had been the leader of Manhattan and gladly taken care of everyone under his watch, he was so used to surviving on his own, feeling as though he could depend on no one but himself, that it had taken the strike, and David and Sarah’s fierce friendship and love and loyalty, for him to see that he already _had_ a family, that the rambunctious and loving group of newsies who followed him did so out of affection and love as well as respect and a need for safety.

Now, in addition to the newsies, he had the incredible woman at his side who had agreed to be his _wife_ , who loved Jack as completely as he loved her (and that was awe-inspiring to Jack, that Sarah could love him so selflessly, when he felt she deserved so much more than an orphaned kid who had grown up on the streets). He had David, who was fervently idealistic and stubborn, but also the world’s most loyal friend. He even had Katherine befriending him and treating him as a brother, giving him equal parts snark and affection and sound advice.

(And if, every now and then, he looked at David and the longing in his heart seemed bottomless, he tried not to dwell on it. David was his best friend, his partner in work, his family, and he would not upset everything they had, everything he had been given, by wishing for the impossible. It was not as if David wanted him back, loved him the same way. He would most likely be horrified, not to mention what Sarah would feel. The thought of hurting either of them in such a way made Jack feel as though he had been stabbed.)

All of this went through his mind in the space of seconds as Davey walked over, and Jack got to his feet, flashing his best friend a grin.

“Ready to go? We’ve got some people to persuade tonight,” he said enthusiastically.

“I am; just let me grab something that we can eat while we walk,” David said, grinning back.

“Already done,” Sarah said promptly, handing him her own lunch pail. “Mama and I put it together for you. It’s not a lot, but you won’t go hungry.”

“Thanks,” David said, giving his sister a smile and a hug. “You’re a lifesaver, Sarah.”

“I try,” she grinned, hugging him back.

“Jack,” Katherine said hesitantly, “I need to tell you something, before you both go. I would wait, except that this is already happening, and I wanted to make sure you knew before I really started the story.”

Jack took in Katherine’s worried face, the anxiousness around her eyes, and he could even see Dave tensing up - which meant Dave already knew what this was about.

“What is it? What’s goin’ on?” he asked, his voice carefully measured.

Katherine squared her shoulders and took a breath. “Denton is having me do a follow-up story on The Refuge. To see what it’s like since Snyder,” she explained. “I’m going to try and see the warden in the next few days, and hopefully see Skittery’s brother, too.”

Jack tried his best to remain impassive, but every alarm bell in his head started ringing, and he could feel how his body went still, how the walls he’d learned to live without started to go back up, purely out of self-defense.

“Katherine. You can’t go in there,” he said hoarsely.

“Jack, I’ll be _fine_ ,” Katherine said, coming forward and putting her hands on his shoulders, trying to reassure him. “I’m a reporter, a public figure; whoever this new warden is, - Collins, I think his name was - he’s going to want to put everything in as positive a light as he can. What I find out might be awful, but nothing’s going to happen to me.”

Jack closed his eyes. “I know that, Kath - well, no I don’t. I wouldn’t’ve put it past Snyder to try and hurt you. He likes hurting people. But even without him - that place is poison.” He sighed, running a hand over his face before opening his eyes again. “Listen, I know how you get about stories. It’s what makes you so good at bein’ a reporter. But watch your back. Smalls’ll help you, if he can. Most of the kids are good kids, underneath it all, but there are a few who would deal with the Devil if they thought it would get them ahead. Snyder wasn’t that far off,” he finished bitterly.

“Okay,” Katherine said softly. “I’ll be careful. I promise.”   

Some of the tenseness had left her posture, but Jack couldn’t bear the worry still on her face. He nodded abruptly.

“We need to go,” he said to David shortly. He hated the way he was speaking, hated that he couldn’t shake the fear, but he couldn’t seem to help it.

Dave nodded, heading for the door, and Katherine followed him. Jack reached for Sarah, and she came willingly, holding him tightly. Jack clung to her for just a moment, breathing her in.

“I love you,” she murmured, resting a hand at the nape of his neck. “Be careful.”

Jack tried to smile. “I always am. I love you, too.”

He made himself let go, made himself walk toward the door, and he gave a quick jerk of his head to David, who followed him without a word.

* * *

 

Jack was always grateful that David knew when to be silent. He pushed when pushing was required, but he knew when to leave Jack alone, too, and during their entire walk to the docks he was quiet. Jack could feel his concerned gaze, but it was almost comforting. (And why was that, that what felt like pity coming from Katherine - though Jack knew in the logical part of his brain that it wasn’t, that her worry never slid over into pity - felt like comfort from Davey?)

It was lucky for him that Dave was the one who was supposed to do most of the talking with the dock workers that evening. Jack didn’t know what was said half the night. It was as if every memory he’d tried to lock away about Snyder and The Refuge was determined to torment him. He gave answers when required, even managed to show some enthusiasm, but it felt like his body was disconnected from his brain, performing the correct motions without him.

When the meeting was over, Jack moved blindly, not knowing where he was going, but he felt David following him faithfully and a little doggedly. Whether Dave knew that Jack still wanted his company, or was just determined not to leave him alone, Jack wasn’t sure, but he was immeasurably glad for Dave’s presence.

He didn’t really regain any awareness of where he was until he was climbing the stairs to the fly gallery in Irving Hall, sliding out onto the catwalk with an ease borne of long familiarity, feeling his way among the ropes and lighting rigging. If there was ever a place that had felt safe to him when he was younger, this was it, among the lights and props and sets of Medda’s theater, watching her perform from the catwalk or the balcony. There was no show tonight, so the theater was dark, and Jack carefully sat himself down onto the narrow wooden platform, pulling his legs up to his chest. Dave sat beside him, pressed close, and even just the contact of their sides, the tangible physical reminder that Dave was there, was enough to help Jack form coherent thoughts again.

“You know, the first time Snyder caught me stealing bread for Crutchie, he put me in solitary for three days,” Jack confessed.

He heard David suck in a soft, shocked breath. This wasn’t something he ever talked about, but tonight, thinking about Kath going into The Refuge after a story, thinking about everything that had happened to him in that place, Jack felt like he had to tell someone or he might go crazy with it. David would listen to him; Dave always listened, and he would never use anything Jack told him as a weapon.

“We were just kids, you know? Crutchie was pretty bad off, then; it hadn’t been too long since he got hurt, and he still couldn’t move around very well. He had stayed in bed that day, and when we all went to supper, I kept some of my bread for him. I knew it wasn’t allowed, but I’d already been thrown in there for stealing food; what did it matter if I stole some more when I was already inside? And I didn’t want Crutchie to be hungry; I knew he needed to eat.”

Jack paused again, swallowing, and Dave reached out and just rested a hand on his forearm. The warmth startled Jack; he felt so cold, and Dave’s hand was like a blanket all on its own, sending heat and comfort up his arm and into his chest.

“Snyder caught me with it on the way out of the dining room, and he didn’t even say anything, just grabbed me by my shirt collar and dragged me to his office. I wasn’t big enough to fight him, yet,” Jack added dryly.

“How old were you?” David asked softly.

“Eight, I think,” Jack answered. “Crutchie was about six, maybe seven. We ain’t that far apart. Snyder took a birch whip to me, then threw me in one of the solitary cells. Said he was going to get me to understand that stealing was ‘unacceptable behavior,’” Jack said sarcastically. “When the list of his ‘unacceptable behaviors’ is a mile long.”

“You were _taking_ some of your _own_ food to a friend who needed it,” David said heatedly. “It wasn’t stealing.”   

Jack snorted. “Try telling that to Snyder. He didn’t feed me while I was in there, either. I got more of the same treatment whenever I tried to keep the Delancys from picking on Crutchie, too, and on some of the other kids. It’s why they hate me so much,” he observed. “I was one of the only ones who stood up to them.”

“Well, that hasn’t changed,” David said, letting a touch of humor enter his tone.

“I met Medda the first time I ran away, a little bit after that,” Jack added, looking around them with a smile. “I managed to get outside one day, ran through the gates when a delivery wagon came in. I snuck in here, and Medda found me wandering around backstage. She let me stay, introduced me to the newsies. I was here a couple of months before Snyder and the police found me.”

“They wouldn’t let Medda keep you?” David questioned. He was still being careful, Jack noticed, asking questions gently and just letting Jack talk if he wanted to. He still wasn’t pushing for anything Jack didn’t want to tell him.

Jack shook his head. “C’mon, Dave. You saw how it works. Snyder always had judges in his pocket, kicked money back to them any time they sent a runaway back to The Refuge. Even if he hadn’t, the police aren’t too keen on performers. Medda didn’t own this place, then, even though she was headlinin’, and they weren’t going to leave a runaway kid who ‘belonged’ at The Refuge with a common actress.”

Jack could hear the disdain and hurt in his own voice. He had loved Medda, even then, and she had loved him, too, and would have been happy to keep him - but actresses (especially unmarried ones) were one step up from prostitutes for the police and the judges, sometimes not even that, and no one in Snyder’s little bribery ring was willing to give up the money they made off him. It didn’t matter to them that they were allowing Snyder to continue his abuse of kids. (Well, and some of them didn’t think of it as abuse. Jack knew that, too. Just proper discipline for street rats.)

“What -” and this time David had to pause and swallow before he tried again, “what did Snyder do, when the police brought you back?”

Jack grimaced, burying his head further into his knees. “More whipping. More isolation. Except he added shackles on my hands and feet. He wanted to keep me from running, and it made it easier for him to hit me, when I couldn’t struggle.”

“Jack.” David sounded strangled, and the hand that was wrapped around Jack’s forearm tightened, as if Dave wanted to reach back through the years and rescue him.

Jack shrugged, trying to be nonchalant, though he knew Dave could tell it was feigned. “Snyder let me out eventually. I’m not sure how long it was. And Crutchie helped; he always talked to me as long as he could when he finally got to bring me food. He kept me from completely losing track of time, reminded me I was a person. Reminded me I was his friend. It was why I could keep challenging Snyder when I got out, keep trying to escape. I knew I wasn’t the terrible person Snyder tried to tell me I was, and Crutchie was a big part of the reason why. And whenever I managed to get outside of The Refuge for a little while, I would go and see Medda, and she would remind me, too. Kept me sane whenever Snyder caught me and I had to go back.”

“And you didn’t get out for good until Roosevelt’s carriage,” David said, his voice shaking. “How old were you by then?”

“Twelve,” Jack said. He remembered that day vividly - creeping out behind Roosevelt and his secretary, and hiding himself at the back of the carriage, hanging onto the frame between the carriage wheels. “Crutchie got out before me; his ma was still alive, then, and came to get him. He went with the newsies when she died.”

“‘And I’m sure Snyder subjected you to the same punishments every time you were caught,” Dave said, and Jack could recognize the shaking in his voice for what it was, now: Fury.

Jack nodded. “Anyway, I guess you can see why Santa Fe was always so appealing. Just the idea of being in the open, with so much light and air, not having anyone after me . . .” he trailed off, unable to say more. After what felt like an age of silence, he finally turned to look at his best friend. He could see David’s blue eyes even in the near-darkness, burning like flames, and the expression on David’s face was one he’d never seen before - rage, so complete and total that it made Dave almost look like a stranger. To see such anger on his behalf took Jack by surprise; of all the ways he thought David might react to hearing his history, anger wasn’t anywhere near the top of the list.

“He’s lucky that he’s in jail,” David seethed, and Jack could feel David trembling with suppressed energy. “If I ever see him in person again, I will kill him myself.”

Jack believed him, and that was a frightening thought. He turned his body so that he could look at Dave a little more directly, and put his arm around Dave’s shoulders.

“Hey,” he said softly. “I’m still here. I got out. And no matter what, nothing Snyder could ever say or do to me now would hurt like it did then. I had the newsies as a family, and then you, and Sarah, and Les and your parents, and Kath. I have _family_ now, David. I never could have imagined that as a kid. Even if Snyder is free again some day, I would never want you to become a killer for me. Do you hear me? That night you came to rescue me, I meant what I said. I don’t ever want you to know what jail is like if you can help it.”

(Right now, he wanted to kiss David. With every fiber of his _being_ , he wanted to kiss David. He couldn’t. He _couldn’t_.)

Dave’s throat worked, and finally he nodded. Jack tightened his fingers around Dave’s far shoulder in thanks. Comforting David made him feel far more human again, and though it was hard to see him so angry, it also warmed something deep down in Jack to know that David cared so much.

“Thanks for listening,” he said quietly. “And for coverin’ up for me, tonight. The thought of Kath goin’ in there, even for a story, worries me. I know she’ll be all right, but I don’t like it.”

“You’re welcome,” David replied, finding his voice, though it was a little croaky. “Thank you for trusting me, with all of that. And I don’t like it either, but you know how Katherine is. Wild horses can’t stop her, once she’s got her teeth into a story.”

Jack chuckled. “I know. Good thing for us, too - without her and Denton, we never would have been able to finish the strike.” He got to his feet, reaching a hand down to David. “Come on. We should go; Sarah and Kath will be worried.”

“They will.” David took the proffered hand and swung himself up, and once he was on his feet he pulled Jack into a hug. He didn’t say anything, but held Jack for a moment, pressing his face into Jack’s shoulder. Jack, though he was startled, held him back, sensing that Dave needed the physical contact as badly as he himself had a few minutes before.

Once they pulled away from each other, they both nodded, exchanging small smiles, and Jack led the way down the ladder, feeling lighter than he had in years. It wasn’t everything, not by a long shot, but telling David some of what he kept locked away let him breathe more easily.

* * *

 

Dave felt as though someone had filled his limbs with lead.

He was glad that Jack had finally talked to him, finally told him just a little of what had happened to him at Snyder’s hands, but knowing what Jack had been subjected to by that sadist made him alternately so furious he felt like fighting his way into Snyder’s cell and strangling him, and so sad that he almost couldn’t move. The conflicting emotions made him feel like vomiting.

He followed Jack home in a daze, trying not to follow too closely, ruthlessly shutting down the impulse to reach out and hold on to Jack and not let go of him for the foreseeable future. The hug had been bad enough; heaven only knew what Jack thought of him for that. Casual hugs were common for them, but not hugs that were long and close, as that one had been - David had just been desperate to feel that Jack was solid and whole in his arms, unharmed and warm, not bleeding and chained to a cold, damp floor.

By the time they walked through the door at home, David’s head was splitting, his heart was aching, and he thought that he might fall asleep where he stood.

Sarah and Katherine rose from the table as they came in the door. “Thank goodness you’re all right!” Katherine exclaimed in a whisper. “It’s after midnight; where have you two been?”

“We walked for a while and then went to Medda’s,” Jack answered. “I just needed to clear my head a little, love; I’m sorry,” he said to Sarah.

“It’s all right; I’m just so thankful you’re both okay,” Sarah said, kissing him. She came over to hug David, next, and got a good look at his face. “Davey, you look tired to death,” she said in concern. “Go wash your face and get ready for bed. We already moved Les to the loveseat; you and Jack can take the bed out here, and Katherine and I will share my room.”

Dave mustered up enough energy to tease her with,“Yes, mama.”

Sarah rolled her eyes. “Go,” she said, turning him around and giving Dave a little push.

Jack hesitated. “I don’t have to stay.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Sarah told him. “It’s not as if you haven’t stayed before, and it’s far too late for you to go anywhere else.”

David moved on wooden feet toward Sarah’s bedroom, and poured water from the ewer into the basin, rinsing his face before applying soap, and then rinsing again. He patted around for the towel, and felt Katherine hand it to him.

“Thank you, sweetheart,” he said, rubbing his face dry and giving a tired sigh.

Katherine was standing next to him when he could see again, her face open and worried. “Sarah was right, dearest. You look awful. What happened?”

Going through the same washing pattern with his hands and forearms, David tried to find the words to explain. “Jack was . . . he was quiet, and upset, all through the meeting. He hid it well, but I could tell. And when we left, he just walked, until we got to Medda’s, and then . . . he told me, finally, about Snyder. About some of what happened at The Refuge, although I’m sure that wasn’t all of it.”

“And it was as bad as we thought?” Katherine asked softly.

“Worse,” Dave whispered.

Katherine reached out and hugged him, holding him close, and there was a level of understanding and compassion in her face that David was too exhausted to try and comprehend.

“I’m glad he talked to you,” Katherine murmured. “Who better to talk to than someone who loves him as much as you do?”

That _did_ manage to reach through the fog in David’s brain, and he stiffened in Katherine’s arms, but she held on, and when she pulled back to look at him, there was still only love on her features.

“Go sleep, darling,” she said. “We all have work in the morning, and we’re all going to be running short on rest. We can talk tomorrow, and at least this way you can be sure that Jack isn’t going to disappear.”

David stared at her. “How . . . ?” He really was too exhausted for this. He’d barely been able to articulate, even to himself, the fear that Jack would be gone in the morning. After uncovering so much of himself, the Jack of eighteen months ago would have hidden behind every wall he had, terrified of the fact that he had let someone so close to the things that had left scars on him. The worst part of it was, he _could_ run now, if he chose - he certainly had the funds and resources to do so. When David wasn’t dead on his feet and angry and hurting, he knew better - Jack was not that person anymore, and he would never leave all of them with no warning - but the fear eating at Dave wasn’t rational.

Katherine smiled, running her fingers through the curls falling over his forehead. “I know you better than you think, Davey Jacobs. Sleep,” she said, kissing him gently. “I love you. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

“I love you, too,” David answered, kissing her in return, before he stumbled out to the front room. Jack had apparently gone through his ablutions in the kitchen, and was already half asleep on the side of the bed nearest the window. It was the work of moments for David to shed his outer layers and fold them on a chair, then grab the second pillow and throw it at the foot of the bed, sliding in so that he and Jack were head-to-toe, as the boys did in the lodging house.  

Jack cracked his eyes open at the movement, his lids heavy with sleep. “Don’t be an idiot, Dave. C’mere.‘S cold,” he mumbled, gesturing clumsily with a hand.

Heart in his throat, Dave rearranged himself so that his head was next to Jack’s. This was _not_ a good idea, not when he was so emotionally raw - but Jack was right, it _was_ cold, the chilled autumn air seeping in through the thin panes of glass, and David was just selfish enough to take advantage of Jack’s half-order, half-request. He curled up on his side, his back to Jack’s front, and let their combined body heat seep into him, listened to Jack’s breathing even out and grow steady, before succumbing to the rest his body and mind so desperately craved.

* * *

 

When David woke again, there was light coming in the window, but the sun wasn’t quite up. At some point during the few hours he had slept, he had turned over so that he was facing Jack, and the sight of Jack’s sleeping face in the morning light made his breath catch. He couldn’t dwell on that, however - he couldn’t bear it, after last night - so he sat up and swung his feet out of bed.

Soft footfalls made him aware that someone else was awake, and Katherine crept into the living room, wearing a wrapper and shawl that were Sarah’s. She went into the kitchen without noticing him and came back carrying the teapot. When she saw that David had awoken, she smiled, pressing a finger to her lips and then pointing upward, indicating that he should come up on the roof.

David dressed quickly, pulling his coat from the peg by the door, and moved silently through Sarah’s bedroom, raising the window sash as quietly as he could and shutting it carefully behind him. When he emerged onto the roof, he found that Katherine must have been up for a while; she had made tea and brought up milk and bread for an early breakfast.

“Did you sleep at all?” David asked, only partly jesting, and Katherine laughed.

“Not much,” she admitted. “I’ll pay for it tonight; this is the second night in a row I’ve been up late and then up before the sun. I’ll need some sleep by the time work is over today. I’ve been thinking about a lot of things the past few days, though, and planning, and so it feels as if the long days have been well spent. I’m glad you’re awake, darling; it means we can talk a little bit before the day begins. I wasn’t sure who would be up first, but I wanted to come up here and take in the sunrise.”

It came over David all at once how beautiful his fiancée was. He had always thought so, but there was something about seeing her this way, sleep-rumpled and informal, that was lovely in an entirely different way from her tailored work clothes. Her loose curls were flowing over her shoulders and glowing in the rising sun as though she were some sort of Venus or Madonna. Her fair skin shone, and David suddenly wished he had Jack’s skill with a pencil. What a stunning portrait it would be, to capture Katherine like this.

“You are beautiful, _tei-yerinkeh_ , do you know that?” he asked, utterly sincere in his admiration.

Katherine’s eyebrows went up in surprise, but she smiled, reaching over and squeezing his hand with her own. “Thank you, darling. What prompted that?”

“Just . . . looking at you,” David said, unable to explain himself better than that. “I wish I could draw you like Jack would, or take a photograph of you right this moment.”

Katherine laughed again, pretending to be scandalized. “In my nightdress, and your sister’s robe and shawl! A fine picture that would make. Imagine the gossip.”

David shook his head. “The clothes don’t matter. It’s being able to see _you_ , the person you are when you’re with me, or with Sarah, the person you are when you’re not Katherine Plumber, daring journalist.”

Katherine cocked her head at him, asking a question. “I am she as well.”

“You are,” David agreed. “And I love her, too. But seeing you this way is different. You’re . . . softer. As I said, beautiful.”

Katherine kissed him gently. “Thank you, dearest. I appreciate it.” She reached over and picked up the teapot that was sitting on the table, pouring tea into the two teacups on the table. “Drink it quickly; it will get cold,” she advised, her lips quirking.

“Thanks,” David said, cradling the warm mug in his hands. “Are _you_ cold? You could borrow my coat. It’s still pretty chilly out here.”

“I’m fine for now, but I may take you up on it in a few minutes,” Katherine answered.

“Would you like to tell me what you’ve been thinking about? You don’t have to, but you did say you wanted to talk,” David offered.

Katherine sipped her tea, and David could see that she was putting her thoughts in order. “Many things, but we don’t have time for all of them, so let’s tackle the most pressing first,” she said. She set her teacup down and reached out for David’s hands, grasping both of them in her own. “When you came home last night, darling, you really did look positively ill. I know what Jack told you was shocking, but it was your reaction that had me so concerned. Was it, perhaps, that you . . . felt more, as a result of what he told you, than you thought you should?”

David stared at her, feeling as though she had punched him. He couldn’t bring himself to acknowledge what she was really asking, couldn’t look at it too closely, or he would fall apart.

“Of course I was _shocked_ , Katherine,” he said harshly. “Snyder refused to feed him, kept him in solitary, whipped him, shackled him! He was a _boy._ A _child_. There’s no excuse for -” David broke off, his anger and helplessness rising up again full force, and Katherine leaned forward, pressing her forehead to his.

“I know,” she whispered. “I know there isn’t, and any of us who care for Jack would be horrified and heartbroken by what he told you. But David, sweetheart.” Katherine cradled his face in her palms, looked him full in the eyes. “I saw you last night. You wanted to tear Snyder apart with your bare hands, and at the same time you wanted to be as close to Jack as you could possibly get. You couldn’t do either, or didn’t think you could, and it was shutting down your ability to do _anything_. That’s a very specific kind of reaction.”

David’s eyes were burning, and he couldn’t stop his hands from shaking, he couldn’t _breathe_ , he couldn’t -  “Katherine - I don’t -”

“I think you’re in love with him, and it’s safe to admit it if you are,” Katherine said, still whispering, still holding him up with her tender hands, with the endless understanding in her eyes.

“I love _you_ ,” David choked out. “I can’t - he doesn’t - it’s not right, it’s not at all what was supposed to happen -”

“Oh, David,” Katherine sighed. She drew his head down to her shoulder, keeping one arm around him and running a hand over his hair. “Listen to me, darling. There isn’t any ‘supposed to’ in this scenario. Do you love him?”

“Yes,” David whispered. He clung to the folds of Katherine’s shawl, closing his eyes, trying to anchor himself against her, against the things he was confessing, things that he had tried to bury for what felt like an eternity.

“And do you love me any less, because you also love Jack?” Katherine persisted softly.

“No,” David refuted, tightening his hold on her further still. The idea that she would walk out of his life after this terrified him; she had become such a crucial part of the brightness of his days, the person he looked to for so many things - intellectual exchange, comfort, laughter, affection, to name just a few.  

Katherine hummed in understanding. “Maybe different in kind, but similar in degree?”

“Yes,” David answered again. He felt wretched, only giving Katherine one-word answers, but it was all he could seem to manage, all he could force past the knotted emotions in his chest. For someone who was known for eloquence, at least in certain situations, it felt pathetic. At the moment, however, Katherine herself was the only thing keeping him together, and she was absolutely right. Both she and Jack were essential to him, but _how_ they were essential differed dramatically.

“Do -” and David felt Katherine swallow, and understood in a flash of insight that whatever she was about to ask was the one part of all of this that scared her - “do you not want to marry me? Because of the difference?”

David raised his head, appalled, and it was enough to shake him out of his wordlessness, out of the physical paralysis that had gripped him.

“Of _course_ I still want to marry you,” he said vehemently. “I would never have asked if I didn’t, and I promised you that you were my family now, too. If I have to believe it, then so do you. That goes both ways, Katherine Plumber.” He was aghast that the thought had even occurred to her. She had already burned her bridges with her own family, for him; had his answer been any different, she truly would have been left with nothing. It was no wonder she had been scared; he was amazed she could ask the question at all.

Katherine relaxed, pulling him closer. Her skin was cold, and he wrapped his arms about her as she kept speaking.

“Well, then, would it be so terrible to have us both?” she asked. “Jack loves you, too, darling; it’s clear as crystal that he does, if you catch his face at the right moment.”

David shut his eyes again, that terrible, vise-like feeling gripping him once more. “You don’t . .  you don’t see it as a betrayal?”

“Betrayal of me? No,” Katherine said soothingly. “You just said it yourself: you don’t love me any less because you love Jack. It might be different kinds of love, but I knew that. And one of the things I have always loved about you, darling, is that you don’t ask me to be any more or less than I am. I won’t ask it of you, either. Love me the way you love me, and love Jack the way you love Jack. I would much rather you be whole and happy, and not spend the rest of your life feeling as though you are missing part of yourself.”

Katherine waited a moment, then added carefully, “It can’t feel like betrayal for you either, though, David. If you carry that into your relationship with Jack, it will taint everything you both feel. Make sure you can love him without feeling guilty for it.”

David nodded slowly. She was right. If there was any possibility of he and Jack being more than they were, guilt over loving each other would only create resentment and anger. They couldn’t afford that, not when a relationship was so risky already, not when their lives as well as Sarah and Katherine’s hung in the balance.

Hopelessness washed over David again as he thought about everything that could go wrong. The very _idea_ of this was crazy, absolute madness. “Even if you’re right about Jack . . . loving me - and I’m not at all sure you are - he . . . Katherine. We’d both be risking jail, at the very least. I won’t do that to him again. I can’t.”

He felt Katherine kiss the top of his head. “I am almost certain he would tell you it was worth the risk, sweetheart.”

“And he loves Sarah,” David went on, feeling sick at the thought. “So much he practically radiates it. Jack might love us both, but Sarah’s my sister, and she loves Jack as much as he loves her. I’ve never seen her so happy. How could I possibly ask that of her? It’s not right, _tei-yerinkeh_.”

Katherine lifted his head off her shoulder, and turned a smiling face to him, one that was equal parts mischief and decision. “It’s right for us, if we all decide it is. And what if Sarah was the one who asked you?”

  
  


**Historical Notes**

1\. Fly gallery and catwalk: The fly gallery is the space above the stage in which lights are anchored, scenery is raised and lowered, and anything that flies, including performers, are anchored and harnessed. Catwalks are the skinny walkways that allow stagehands to walk among the ropes, lights, canvases, and other equipment. Now they are usually made of metal mesh and pipes (which serve as anchors for the lights), but they used to be made of wood. Catwalks can also exist over the audience, for additional lighting and effects.

2\. As I noted in the last chapter, The Refuge went through periodic inspections and investigations over the course of its existence. It was originally created as a shelter for younger children, but gradually ended up taking in older children as well, children who had been living on the street longer and had perhaps engaged in criminal activity, either for survival or by choice. Many of the wardens did not look kindly on the older children, believing that they had genetic criminal tendencies and that harsh punishment was no more than what they deserved, and perhaps the only thing that would correct their behavior. Some of the younger children were also subjected to punishments. Lack of food was frequently found to be a problem, as was harsh corporal punishment and extended solitary confinement, sometimes including shackles. Given what canon tells us about Snyder, I am using him as kind of a focalizer for many problems that happened over time. For more information on the history of The Refuge, see Fass and Mason, _Childhood in America_ , and Steven Mintz, _Huck's Raft_.

3\. Estimating ages, as Jack does, was also common. The U. S. did not get a standardized system for birth certificates until 1902; prior to that, churches usually kept records when children were baptized. Therefore, people did not always know precisely what day they were born, sometimes not even what year, particularly if their parents died early or they were separated from their parents.

4\. Jack’s reflections about Medda and adoption are also based in fact. Actresses were not looked upon kindly, in social terms; they were considered immoral and sexually promiscuous, partly because they performed in public and for the public, which was scandalous for women, and partly because actors and performers in general were considered an immoral group of people. Married actresses and classically trained female singers (both single and married) gained a little more respectability, more the latter than the former. As far as we know, Medda is single, and that would not have worked in her favor, either, as judges usually preferred to place children with married couples. Adoption as we think of it now was not always formalized legally. The New York Children’s Aid Society was the first organization to experiment with “placing out,” finding poor and immigrant children homes with farm families, both in New York State and outside of it. Sometimes these placements were permanent and sometimes not. Parents had to release their children to the care of the CAS, but other children had no parents and were referred to CAS from orphanages. Sometimes parents reclaimed their children, and sometimes children ran away from their first placement or found their own situations with other families. The CAS also opened lodging houses for homeless children. Again, see Fass and Mason and Mintz for more information on the CAS.

5\. Jack’s skill with pencil and paintbrush is canonical, insofar as it is a key feature of his character in the _Newsies_ Broadway show. (For those of you, like me, who are newer to the Broadway show and more familiar with the film.)

6\. I don’t want to underplay Katherine’s fear, here (and she may talk about it to Sarah, later). Had David changed his mind about their engagement, she would have been trying to live off of a reporter’s salary, which was not a lot, at the time, even for a full-time male reporter, and for a woman even less. She already _has_ burnt her bridges with her father, so she can’t go back - she very well might have ended up impoverished, certainly to a greater degree than she will be as part of David’s family, and without any kind of support network.


	4. Sarah

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello all! Just a short chapter, this time - but it sets up other things, and the next chapter has the potential to be ridiculous in terms of length. Something to look forward to, maybe? :)
> 
> I have to once again thank my amazing betas and friends - WickedforGood13, who is always encouraging and sweet about the craziness that is this fic, and especially Nagaem_C, who was playing "Who has the shawl?" with me as we were going through the chapter, and then I realized there were two! :D Hopefully that's clarified now. Both of them caught some clarification errors that were much better once they had been fixed, and I appreciate it so much.
> 
> Thank all of you, too, for your lovely responses to this story so far! It's been so heartwarming and gratifying to read all of your comments and have a chance to respond, and to get to know some of the wonderful people in this fandom. :)

**Chapter Four: Sarah**

 

The soft vibration of the window frame woke Sarah. Her eyes were heavy, and she slowly swam to the surface of consciousness, turning over to see that the sky was just light. She caught a glimpse of David’s feet climbing the stairs to the roof, and when she turned back to the room, she realized that Katherine was already gone. Sarah’s robe and shawl were also gone, so Sarah knew that her brother and Katherine must be up on the roof together.

Closing her eyes again, Sarah sent up a silent prayer that Katherine could help David, and that her hopes for bringing David and Jack together would come to fruition. When the pair of them had returned last night, Sarah had been profoundly worried about her brother. He had looked shattered, both emotionally and physically, and Sarah knew that it must have had to do with Jack’s revelations about his time at The Refuge.

_When David had gone to wash for bed, Katherine following him, Sarah had sent a concerned look after David, and then had turned to Jack._

_“Is he all right? Are_ you _all right? I was worried when you took so long to come home,” she said, learning against Jack and looping her arms around his waist._

_Jack rested his head on top of her own, kissing her hair and wrapping his arms around her in return. “I’m fine, love. Better than I was earlier, actually. I’m sorry you were worried. Dave’s . . . upset. I . . . told him some things, about The Refuge and Snyder, and it helped a lot - but I didn’t expect him to get so angry about it.”_

_Sarah looked up at him with a slight frown. “Jack. Of course he would be angry on your behalf. He’s your best friend. He loves you. And suspecting or knowing what Snyder did in the abstract is not the same as having you tell him what happened, how it was for you. I am sure he’s grateful that you told him, but it’s going to hurt to hear it. It would hurt me, too, but I would always want you to tell me.”_

_“I ‘spose that’s true,” Jack murmured thoughtfully. “Do you . . . do you wish I had told you, and not Dave?”_

_Sarah shook her head. “Not if Davey is the person you needed to talk to. Sometimes we need a particular person, for particular hurts. Davey was there with you far more than I was, when Snyder found you again at the beginning of the strike, and after you were arrested at the rally. Dave has been to The Refuge, seen it a little bit when he went with you to help Crutchie and then rescued you. It makes sense that you would talk to him about this. I will always be happy to listen, love, but I will never force you to tell me things.”_

_“Thank you,” Jack said quietly, giving her a soft kiss._

It had been a small step toward the larger conversation that they needed to have, reminding Jack that David loved him (and Sarah had deliberately not put qualifiers around that statement) and making it clear that Jack could choose who to confide in. Even had Sarah not been in the peculiar position of knowing how much Jack and David loved each other, had she been in the more typical situation of marrying her brother’s platonic best friend, she would have understood that there were confidences between them that didn’t always include her. When they spent so much of their waking lives together, working together, organizing together, it was a given that they were going to have shared experiences that were unique.

Knowing what she did, however, and what she and Katherine were trying to do, it seemed all the more imperative to make it clear that she trusted Jack to talk to her when he needed to, that she always wanted to be one of the people he trusted the most, but that she did not need to be the sole possessor of his thoughts or his heart.

Sarah got out of bed and put on her slippers, moving quietly into the living room and pulling one of her mother’s shawls off of the rocking chair. As she wound it around her shoulders, she thought of Katherine wrapped up in her own robe and shawl, and the image made her smile.

She glanced out the window; they would all need to be going relatively soon, if they were going to be on time, herself to the factory and David and Jack to the railroad yard. Katherine had a little more lead time; she had been into the office so early the previous morning that Denton would not mind if she came in a little bit later.

She turned from the chair and went over to the bed, sitting down on the mattress next to Jack. A wave of tenderness washed over her as she watched his sleeping face. He was so beautiful, both inside and out. Sometimes it still took her breath away to think that she had the privilege of loving him, that she was going to marry him.  

(She wanted, so much, to know what it felt like to be with him, to sleep in his arms, to wake up next to him.)

“Jack,” she said softly, reaching out and stroking his hair. “Jack, _neshomeleh_. Wake up.”

Jack sighed, his eyes opening slowly. He smiled as he saw her. “Mornin’, love. You are a gorgeous sight to wake up to.”

Sarah smiled in return, her heart warming even more at his loving expression. “I could say the same about you. Time to be up, love. We all have to get to work.”

Jack sat up, rubbing his hands wearily over his face. “I’m up. Just let me get dressed and drink some coffee.”

“I’ll have it in a minute. I’ll get the kettle hot,” Sarah said, giving him a quick kiss before making her way to the kitchen.

She put the coarse coffee grounds into the bottom of the cast-iron kettle and filled it with water. Katherine must have already made tea, for the stove was hot, so Sarah simply added several pieces of coal and set the kettle on top. She pulled tin cups from the cupboard, and then went to put on a skirt and chemise while the water boiled, putting the shawl back over her shoulders. She would do the more complicated dressing for work once the coffee was done.

Jack came out into the kitchen, dressed and washed, with his hair freshly combed, and he walked up behind her and simply held her around the waist, nuzzling her hair until the kettle began to burble. Sarah picked up the kettle carefully with a potholder, moving it onto a trivet to let the grounds settle. Jack resumed his embrace of her once everything was safely put down, and Sarah leaned back into him, taking comfort from his nearness.

“Jack, watch out for David today, will you?” she requested. “I’m . . . hopeful that he’s all right, after some rest and talking with Katherine, but he could still be tired, maybe a little upset, and it’s not safe for either of you to be distracted while you’re working. It’s too dangerous at the yards for that.”

She felt Jack nod. “Of course, love. We always look out for each other anyway, but I’ll keep a sharper eye on Dave today, if it’ll make you feel better.”

“It would,” she agreed. “Thank you.”

Once Sarah was sure it had been long enough, she carefully twisted a piece of cheesecloth around the spout of the kettle, letting the coffee filter out, trying not to burn her fingers as she poured. She filled two cups and handed one to Jack, who sighed appreciatively at the heat and the smell. He sipped carefully, and Sarah headed toward her parents’ bedroom. She tapped lightly on the door.

“Mama? Papa? Are you up? The coffee’s ready,” Sarah called.

“We’ll be right out, dear,” her mother replied. “Thank you.”

Moving back toward the kitchen, Sarah heard the telltale slide of the window in her bedroom again, and she changed direction. She reached her bedroom doorway just as Katherine and David were stepping in the window, Katherine with the teapot in her hands and Davey carrying the milk bottle and teacups.

“Good morning, early birds,” she said with a smile. “Davey, you want to get moving. Jack is ready to go as soon as he’s eaten something, and there’s coffee in the kitchen for you.”

Once he had made sure that Katherine was steady on her feet coming in the window, David set the things he was carrying on the windowsill, and then he came over to Sarah, folding her into a close hug.

“Thank you,” he murmured, holding her tightly.

“Davey, what on earth . . .?” Sarah questioned. She could not remember the last time he had hugged her like this, so tightly, as if he were afraid and grateful all at once.

“Later,” he promised. “I need a little time, sis, but . . . later.”

“Later it is, then,” she answered reassuringly. Sarah had a feeling she knew what had transpired on the roof, at least in general terms, and David clearly needed to process his thoughts. Later was fine. They all had to go or risk being fired, and that was the one thing the family could not afford.

David let her go and moved over to Katherine, kissing his fiancée gently before picking up the things he had left and heading to the kitchen. Sarah turned wide eyes to Katherine, who shook her head slightly. “Wait, just a bit,” she whispered.

Sarah went back toward the living room, feeling Katherine fall in behind her. Her mother was coaxing Les awake, she could hear her father pouring more coffee, and Jack and David were talking in low tones by the door. Sarah watched her brother. Nothing was outwardly different, but there was something different, nevertheless; his internal conflict seemed to have eased. Davey was quiet, even for him, but there was a calmness about him that Sarah hadn’t seen in a long time.

Sarah went over to Jack, who smiled warmly at her. “Thanks for the breakfast, love,” he said, leaning down to kiss her goodbye. “Have a good day today.”

“I will,” Sarah promised. “Are you two coming back tonight?”

“I think so,” Jack nodded. “It’s hard to believe, but we don’t have a meeting, so unless somethin’ happens at the yards or with the newsies, we should be back.”

Sarah raised her eyebrows and inclined her head a fraction of an inch back toward David, who was saying his goodbyes with Katherine, and Jack gave her the tiniest of nods. He had noticed, too, then, and would keep his promise.

“Good,” she said out loud. “We’ll see you then.”

“Good morning, Jack,” Katherine said with a smile, coming up beside him and giving him a hug. “I’ll let you know what I hear today, all right? I should hear something from Collins, and hopefully from Skittery as well.”

Jack returned the hug, smiling back at her. “Please do, Kath. I’ll feel better if I at least know when you’re goin’ in and out of there.”

“I will,” Katherine promised solemnly, kissing his cheek, and Jack nodded at her in thanks.

Sarah’s father came to the door as well, fully ready to go and saying he would walk as far as he could with Jack and David, and so the three men left together.

Sarah turned swiftly to Katherine. “I don’t have much time, or I’m going to be late. Help me with my corset?”

“Of course,” Katherine nodded, and the two girls hurried to Sarah’s bedroom, where Sarah quickly threw her mother’s shawl on the bed and undid her skirt, rapidly pulled on drawers and stockings under her chemise, and then picked up her corset from where it lay on the trunk at the foot of the bed. She unfastened the hooks on the front, putting it around her torso and refastening it. She pulled her hair over her shoulder to keep it out of the way.

Katherine stepped up behind her and did up the corset laces with practiced hands, hooking her fingers through the crisscrossed strands and pulling the loops tight, one after the other, all the way down to Sarah’s waist.

“I talked to Davey this morning, about Jack,” she said softly, keeping her voice low, letting the swish and slide of the laces act as as a barrier to being overheard.

Sarah stilled, though she’d barely been moving before, as her surmise about David’s odd behavior was confirmed. “I thought so,” she breathed, as mindful of her mother and Les in the next room as Katherine had been. “And?”

Katherine went through the laces a second time, more slowly, making sure they were drawn to the tightness Sarah was used to, before tying the laces off neatly. “You were right, about all of it,” Katherine said, her voice suddenly sounding thick. “Oh, Sarah, I knew you were, but seeing him, hearing him . . . he’s been hurting so much, carrying this around for so long.”

Sarah turned around and found Katherine wiping tears from her eyes. She drew the other girl into her arms without a word.

“He . . . felt as though just by having feelings for Jack, he was betraying all of us,” Katherine went on, still struggling against tears. “I . . . I didn’t need convincing before, but if I had, that would have done it. To . . . to think that he’s betraying the three people he cares for most, just by being himself . . . and when Jack loves him, too . . . it’s so painful for him, and so unnecessary. ”

“It’s all right,” Sarah comforted her. “You got him to talk to you, which is amazing in itself, and he _knows_ , now, that you don’t see him as a terrible person or think of your relationship as lessened in any way.”

“Of course not,” Katherine sniffled, trying to compose herself, wiping her eyes again on Sarah’s shawl, which was still around her shoulders. “And he knows you don’t, either - I told him that you had seen it first, that you had talked to me about it. I don’t think he knew what to say - he seemed so shocked that you would be willing to do this, for him and for Jack.”

Sarah sighed quietly. “Which explains his reaction when you came in this morning,” she said, giving Katherine one more hug before she stepped away to retrieve her corset cover and a shirtwaist from her trunk. “My brother likes to think of me as a highly proper person,” she said as she eased the corset cover over her head. She adjusted it and then started working on her shirtwaist. “He forgets that we are cut from the same cloth in many ways - that neither of us care about how things are supposed to work, the so-called ‘natural order’ of things; we care about what’s right.” She pulled a petticoat from the trunk next, tugging it up over everything, then went around to the side of the bed and picked her skirt back up. “I believe this is right with all my heart.”

“You aren’t the only one,” Katherine said, finally smiling. “Here.” She went behind Sarah again and started doing up the buttons and hooks in her skirt, so that Sarah didn’t have to reach behind herself.

“I don’t know what Dave will _do_ , mind you,” Katherine went on, her face sobering quickly. “He’s not convinced that Jack feels the way he does - which is ridiculous - and knowing he _can_ do something is not the same as actually deciding to do it. I think he’s still worried that he’ll hurt the two of you, even if he really accepts that I won’t be hurt.” She finished fastening up the skirt and gave Sarah’s waist a squeeze to signal she was finished. “There.”

“Thank you,” Sarah said appreciatively, kissing Katherine’s cheek. “I’ll talk to him. He seems to want to talk to me, as well, and I still have to talk to Jack. Small steps.” She went over to the mirror that hung above the bureau and quickly twisted her hair into a knot on the crown of her head, shoving pins in to hold it with motions born of long practice. “Done. Boots and shawl and pail, and I’m ready to go.”

Katherine hugged her from behind, kissing Sarah’s cheek in return. “I’ll stay for a bit and help your mother. I have time.” She pulled Sarah’s shawl off her own shoulders and draped it over Sarah’s, and they smiled at each other in the mirror.

Sarah then went swiftly out to the living room, and hurried as much as she could to put on her boots, with their endless laces. Her mother came up to her with her lunch pail in hand.

“Thank you so much, Mama,” Sarah said, giving her mother a quick hug. “I really have to run; I’m going to risk being late as it is. I’ll see you for supper!” Blowing kisses to her mother and Katherine, Sarah ran out the door.

 

**Historical Notes**

1\. “The more typical situation of marrying her brother’s platonic best friend” - I use “typical” kind of facetiously here. This is something about relationships in this period that Disney got right, though I don’t know how they did. Victorian/19th century novels had these kinds of marriages _all the time_ , where one male best friend would marry the other’s sister, or one female best friend would marry the other’s brother, thus making them all family by marriage. Alcott’s _Little Women_ and _Work_ , Braddon’s _Lady Audley’s Secret_ , Kelly-Hawkins’ _Four Girls at Cottage City_ and _Megda_ , to name just a few, all have this scenario. Whether these types of marriages were actually that frequent is anyone’s guess - you would have to find diaries or letters or other personal records that identified someone as a best friend, and then tie marriage records into that, proving that the best friend married a sibling. It wouldn’t be the easiest thing to prove, historically, without a lot of archival digging. Clearly, though, it was common enough to show up in fiction as a trope.

 _2\. Neshomeleh_ \- sweetheart.

3\. I have learned some strange things for this story. One of the typical methods of making coffee in 1900 was to boil the grounds directly in the hot water, let the grounds settle to the bottom while the coffee brewed, and then pour off the liquid. (The boiling was also a way of making sure the water was sanitary.) Sometimes the grounds were filtered out; Sarah’s method of using cheesecloth here is my own invention. It was somewhere early in the 20th century that people discovered the coffee was better if you boiled the water first, then poured it over the grounds, rather than putting grounds and water together before boiling.

4\. Dressing was clearly a complicated process! Women had so many layers even for the simplest outfits. I loved the gentle intimacy of Katherine helping Sarah - this is something they can do for one another almost without thought, and yet it’s very trusting.

 


	5. Jack

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Friday, lovely people! I must once again give all of my gratitude and love to Nagaem_C and WickedforGood13, who continue to put up with my ever-longer and more complex chapters, and who offer such wonderful suggestions and feedback. There is a _lot_ that happens in this chapter, and I hope you all enjoy it. :)

**Chapter Five: Jack**

 

Jack kept a close eye on David as they walked with Meyer, chatting casually. Sarah was right; Dave was calmer than he had been last night. The small amount of sleep they had gotten and his early conversation with Katherine seemed to have helped him. Jack could see his fatigue in the way his shoulders drooped, though, and there was still something in his eyes that was off. He was focused more inward than outward, and while that wasn’t entirely uncommon for Dave, it wasn’t where he needed to be when they got to work. Being on the section crew and helping to move cargo meant that they all had to be focused. One mistake with a rope or knot or pulley, or even with one of the hand trucks, meant someone could be seriously hurt.

He moved closer to Dave, bumping his shoulder casually. “You awake there, Davey?”

Dave glanced up at him, a half-smile pulling at his mouth. “Yeah. A little tired, but I’m okay.”

“Me, too,” Jack admitted. “Let’s try and keep each other alert today.”

“You boys be careful,” Meyer reminded them. “I worry about how risky the work at the yard is.”

“We’ll be careful, Papa,” David promised, sending a wider smile at his father, the fond smile that said he understood his father’s worrying, but also that he’d heard the same reminder more times than he could count.

“I turn here,” Meyer said, preparing to veer off Jack and David’s route. “Have a good day, boys. I’ll see you for dinner.”

“Have a good day, Papa,” David said, and Jack chimed in with a mock salute and a grin, taking Meyer’s last statement as an order. “Yes, sir.”

Meyer smiled at them both before heading on his way, and as they kept walking, Jack caught David grinning at him out of the corner of his eye. “What?”

“Nothing,” Dave said, shaking his head. “Just . . . nothing.”

Jack shrugged, grinning back. “Okay.” Whatever had amused Davey, he wasn’t going to press him. On another morning, he might have, but one part of him was too watchful and aware, this morning, and the other part too content in their easy camaraderie, to push Dave for answers. He knew, instinctively, that David needed their normal right now, and that trying to get him to talk was not going to end well. So he kept walking, and Dave did, too, both of them comfortable in the quiet until they reached the railroad yards.

Looking at the panorama of tracks and cars and men spread in front of them, Jack had to admit that part of him loved working here. The work was hard, but the bustle and sense of purpose was motivating, and the feeling that he was surrounded by constantly moving parts was exhilarating. The yards somehow satisfied the occasional itch Jack still felt to see other places - _he_ might not be going anywhere, but the trains were, and he had a part in that.

In addition, the men who worked here were good people. The railroad unions were some of the longest standing union organizations, and while they had only won the protection of not being fired for belonging two years before, along with the right to collective bargaining and arbitration, most of the men who worked in various positions on the railroad had belonged to their own union organizations for much longer than that. They had, for the most part, embraced Jack and David as fellow unionists, and welcomed the help the two of them wanted to provide to try and improve wages and hours.

It had been Denton who had secured them these jobs in the first place, about two months after the newsies strike had ended, and it was another thing Jack felt indebted to him for. Railroad jobs were not easy to get, particularly for two young men with no experience and no family connections, and Denton’s acquaintance with the yardmaster had made all the difference.

Denton had actually sought them out on Park Row one morning, finding them easily among the throngs of newsies buying the morning edition. He and Kath had been earning their keep writing about the sweatshop kids who had helped them win the strike, and while real change was slow in coming, it had definitely been - and still was - in the air.

_“Jack! David!” Denton called, raising a hand as he worked his way through the crowd gathered at the circulation window._

_“Our man Denton!” David cheered with a grin, clapping the newspaper man on the back as he reached them._

_Jack, too, reached out and shook Denton’s hand, smiling. “Good to see you, Denton.”_

_“What are you doing here?” Dave asked. “Aren’t you and Katherine supposed to be writing another earth-shaking story?”_

_“Well, I don’t know about earth-shaking, but we do our best,” Denton acknowledged modestly. “I actually came to find you both because I had a very interesting conversation yesterday with Mr. Richardson, the yardmaster at the railroad yard. He’s been my source on stories several times, and he’s a good man, a friendly acquaintance as well as a colleague. We were having lunch yesterday so that he could fill me in on what’s been happening with the railroad unions, and that was when he asked me to tell him about you two, and asked if I knew where to find you.”_

_Jack’s brow furrowed. “Find us? What for?”_

_“To offer you jobs,” Denton said with a smile._

_Jack and David exchanged incredulous looks._

_“Denton . . .” David said slowly. “Why does a railroad yardmaster want to hire us? That . . . doesn’t make any sense.”_

_“He has a couple of openings on the car crews, the men who load and unload the freight cars and serve as extra hands,” Denton explained patiently. “It’s hard work, but it pays pretty well, and there’s potential to move up. He’s been looking for some young, capable men, and he wanted you because he knows that you’re both already invested in the union idea - obviously,” Denton grinned, gesturing at the throng of newsies around them. “The last thing the railroad wants is workers who fight against their unions, when they’ve come so far. And you two made a name for yourselves, when you started this.”_

_“What did you tell him?” Jack asked, his shoulders tense._

_“Well, I told him that first of all there was no one better, if the two of you decided to take the jobs,” Denton said sincerely. “And second, that you had been talking to the stockyard and dock workers about unionizing. He didn’t have any objection to you both continuing that work, when you’re not on the clock. He actually was hoping that you would work with the railroad unions as well, see what you can do to agitate for better hours and wages. Hours, especially.”_

_“So he wants us to work for him_ and _organize for him,” David said, clearly still trying to wrap his head around what Denton was saying._

_“Essentially, yes,” Denton agreed. “It’s a great opportunity, if you want it.”_

_“Richardson does understand that I’m Jewish, right?” David asked bluntly. “I would think the last name would tell him, but maybe not.”_

_Jack’s hackles immediately went up. “Why the hell does that make any difference?” he asked hotly._

_Dave gave him a look that was somewhere between telling him he was an idiot for asking and thanking him. “Jack. You know it does. The railroad unions are organized by craft; they’re not a single industrial union like the ILGWU. Craft unions can keep out whoever they want to, and they do.”_

_“Well, it_ shouldn’t _matter,” Jack fired back, his hands balling into fists. “It ain’t fair.”_

_“It shouldn’t matter, but it does,” David sighed. “And it’s not fair, and this is why we keep working to change things.”_

_“Richardson knows you’re Jewish, David,” Denton answered him solemnly. “It doesn’t matter to him. He’s more interested in what you bring to the table as a worker and organizer than in what religion you practice. I can’t promise it will be the same for everyone who works for him, so it’s a risk. But he’ll step in on your behalf if he needs to. I would advise you to just watch what you say - be careful to avoid Yiddish when you’re working. Don’t give anyone a reason to pick a fight.”_

_“I do that anyway,” David said frankly. “I almost never use Yiddish unless I’m at home. It’s almost instinct by now.”_

_Jack looked over at David, hoping that David could read his face, as he sometimes could. Dave took in his expression and turned back to Denton. “Can we - think about it a little? We’re really grateful, Denton, and I think we will, but this is unexpected. I’d like to talk about it with my folks, too.”_

_Denton nodded, sending a sharp-eyed glance between David and Jack. “That’s understandable. I never would have thought of this, either, but Richardson seems keen to have the pair of you. Think about it today, and if you decide to do it, you can let me know, and go over to the yards in a couple of days. I’ll send Richardson a note when I get back to the office.”_

_“Thanks, Denton,” Dave said, relieved, and Jack nodded as well._

_“It means a lot, havin’ you believe in us,” he said sincerely._

_Denton smiled. “I always did. You make it hard not to,” he replied. “Have a good day, boys.”_

_“You, too, Denton. Take care of Kath for us,” Jack said, and that made Denton laugh outright._

_“That girl is a whirlwind. I don’t know how you do it, David,” he said, and Dave grinned at him. “Sometimes I think it’s really she who takes care of me. But I’ll try,” he promised. He touched his hat and was gone, working his way back through the crowd._

_“Come on,” Dave said, touching Jack’s shoulder. “Let’s get our papes, and we can talk about this while we walk.”_

_Jack nodded, following Dave to the circulation window and buying his papes in silence, except for the polite exchange with Smithy, the kind older man who had replaced Weisel. Once they had put a couple of blocks between themselves and Park Row, David nudged Jack with his shoulder._

_“What’s going on, Jack?” he asked quietly. “I would think you’d be happy about this. I mean, railroad work can be dangerous, but it pays well, and it sounds like this Richardson still wants us to be organizers. We’d be gaining money, and not giving up on trying to help, trying to make things better. We’d still be working_ and _organizing together. What’s the problem?”_

_“Well, I don’t like the idea that you’d be walkin’ into a yard full of bigots, for starters,” Jack said sharply, his tone more angry than he’d meant it to be._

_David sighed. “Jack, it’s not the first time I’ll have had to deal with it, and it won’t be the last, either. If Richardson is willing to bring me on, the work we can do there could be more important and last a lot longer than anything anyone says to me. And there’s no way to know if it will even happen.”_

_“It ain’t words I’m worried about,” Jack muttered. He paused, then spoke again. “I didn’t realize you did that, with Yiddish,” he admitted, a bit shamefacedly. “I’m around you so much that I didn’t even think about it. But it’s true, isn’t it? You use it with your family, and with people in your neighborhood, but not anywhere else.”_

_“It’s true,” David said quietly. “I’m not exactly proud of it, but it’s a survival skill. It makes life easier. As Denton said, it gives people less of a reason to start a fight. It’s different for Sarah - so many of the garment workers are Jewish that no one even bats an eye at hearing Yiddish in the shops. Most of the time, she doesn’t have a reason to hide - or maybe, to improve the truth a little bit,” David finished, cracking a smile._

_“It isn’t funny, Dave!” Jack said in frustration. “What would’ve happened to our strike, if we’d said we didn’t want Race because he’s Italian, or we didn’t want Boots because he’s a Negro, or we didn’t want Spot because he’s Irish? What kind of power would we have had then? You think I don’t worry about what’s goin’ to happen to them, once they can’t be newsies anymore? About who will hire them and who won’t, and whether they’ll even be able to eat? How are we supposed to make things better, if everybody starts fightin’ each other over who belongs?” Jack paused in their walk, slumping against a building, under an awning and out of the glare of the morning sun._

_Dave stopped with him and turned to look at him, realization dawning. “This is what had you so upset. You’re worried about what will happen to the newsies?”_

“ _We’d be giving up on them,” Jack said. “What happens to Crutchie, and Race, and Boots, and everyone, when we can’t look out for them anymore?”_

_David’s tone was gentle when he spoke again. “Jack, they know that newsies don’t stay newsies forever. They’ll be happy for you. I know I’m not as important to them, and there’s no reason I should be, but they’ll be happy for you. And it will mean something to them, that we still get to do this work for other people. They’re fighters. They’ll find ways to survive, just like we all do.”_

_“That’s ridiculous, Dave,” Jack said vehemently. “You_ are _important to them - I’ve known them longer, but you’re important to them, too. Don’t think for a second that any one of them wouldn’t defend you if you needed it. I just - I don’t want to leave them, Davey,” he confessed quietly. “I knew I would have to, but - I didn’t think it would be now.”_

 _“I know it’s not easy. I know much they mean to you. They’re your family,” David said softly. “But Jack, getting a new job doesn’t mean they stop being your family. It doesn’t mean you stop helping them or looking out for them. It doesn’t mean the union stops, either. It means that Race takes over Manhattan. It means that Blink or Skittery or Specs becomes his second._ _And you know that Spot will support Race, which means the other boroughs will, too. It means that we make sure they’re okay, as often as we can. We’ll still be there for them, just not as constantly. They’ll be fine. We’ll make sure of it.”_

_Dave set a light hand on his arm, and it gave Jack enough hope to lift his head, to open his eyes. Dave’s face held nothing but sympathy._

_“I can’t let anything happen to them, Dave,” he said intently. “Even if we’re workin’ somewhere else, I can’t stop protecting them.”_

_“I know, Jack,” David reassured him, squeezing his forearm. “I know. No one’s asking you to. And I’ll be right there with you, helping you. I care about all of them, too.”_

And so their pact had been made. Leaving the newsies had been hard, one of the hardest things Jack had ever done, but it had been the right decision. Just as David had said they would, they all supported their strike leaders moving up to bigger and better things. He and David kept their own promise, too, being there for their friends and helping when they could, and they made it clear that any of the newsies could come to them at any time, for anything.

And Racetrack had been more than ready to take over, Jack knew; he had plenty of experience as Jack’s second and knew Manhattan backward and forward. Race running Manhattan meant that Brooklyn and Manhattan became firm allies, as well. Jack’s relationship with Spot was one of friendship and respect, even if they sometimes disagreed, but the peace between their boroughs and their newsies had been contentious sometimes. Race and Spot were - well. Race and Spot. They would walk through fire for each other, and compared to that, getting Brooklyn and Manhattan newsies to be friends was a walk in the park.

“Kelly! Jacobs!” Cooper, one of the men on their car crew, hailed them as they came into the yard, waving and flashing a grin at them.

“Cooper!” Jack called back, raising a hand. “You manage to propose to your girl yet?” he teased.

“Shut up, Kelly,” Cooper said good-naturedly, jokingly punching Jack in the shoulder once they were close enough. “Just because you and Jacobs here managed to snag both your girls at the same time, you think all of us should be in a hurry to do the same.”

“I think you _are_ in a hurry; I just think you haven’t found the guts to do it,” Jack snarked back, grinning.

Adams and Peterson, the other two members of their car crew, came up as well, falling into step with the three of them.

“Being engaged has some pretty amazing benefits, Cooper, I have to say,” David chimed in, grinning as well. “I’d recommend it.”

“Of course you would, Jacobs,” Cooper said, waggling his eyebrows. “Anyone would want to be engaged to that red-headed revolutionary of yours. Gorgeous and spirited and smart, all together.”

David laughed. “Hands off, Cooper; she’s taken.”

“I’d rather steal your sister away from Kelly here, Jacobs,” Peterson joined in. “Just as smart and spirited, but even prettier.”

“Not a chance - but I’ll tell her you said so, Peterson,” Jack answered, still grinning.

“Seriously, Cooper, when are you going to ask Grace to marry you?” David asked. “You’re crazy about her.”

“Oh, only when I’m sure Katherine isn’t going to wise up and throw you over,” Cooper winked, refusing to give a straight answer.

Their banter continued as the five men proceeded toward the boxcars that were first in line for unloading. The work went well throughout the morning. The group made their way through three boxcars of cargo, unloading the heavy wooden crates from their stacks onto dollies, out to the platforms alongside the tracks, and from the platforms into wagons that would transport them to various places across the city.

Jack felt uneasy as soon as they climbed into the fourth car. His skin prickled, and the hair on the back of his neck rose as though they were being watched. Something wasn’t right, but he couldn’t figure out what. He did a scan of the piles of boxes, looking for anything that might have been stacked incorrectly or might have moved during transport, but nothing immediately caught his eye. His senses were on alert now, though, and he watched sharply as they worked.

They began lowering the freight boxes from the top of the pile on one side of the car, patiently going through the steps of securing the ropes around the freight, checking the pulleys, then manning the ropes and lowering a box at a time down to the floor of the car, then sliding them to the waiting dollies.

When they were about two-thirds of the way done with that side of the car, Jack called a quick halt to let everyone get a drink of water. Despite the cold temperature outside, they were all sweating profusely, and making sure everyone drank enough was part of his job.

David walked toward the other side of the car, wiping his face on his shirt as he waited for his turn with the water pail and dipper, and it was right in that moment that a movement in the shadows, up at the top of the car, flickered in the edge of Jack’s vision.

“David!” he shouted in warning, but his voice was lost as two of the packing crates came tumbling from the top of the pile, hitting the others with a great crack as they rolled. David had looked up at his shout, and the other men dove out of the way with cries of fright, but the crates were simply too fast for David to get out of the way.

Jack himself had to dive to the side, and he watched in horror as one of the crates caught David fully in the legs, knocking him down and leaving him crumpled on the floor of the car.

A figure sprang up from behind the crates, hurtled recklessly down the pile, and ran out the door of the car before Jack could get his bearings, but Adams and Cooper sprang after the runner. Jack got to his feet and hurried over to David, terror choking him at how still his best friend was. He fumbled for the pulse at David’s throat, letting out a small sigh of relief when he found it, but there was a jagged wound on the back of David’s head that was bleeding at an alarming rate, probably inflicted either from a broken piece of the crate or when David fell to the floor. He might have hit his head on the way down.

“He’s alive,” Jack said tightly to Peterson, the one other member of their car crew left. “Get the doc, and Richardson. We need bandages, and he might need stitches.”

Peterson gave a quick nod and disappeared as well, running like a greyhound for the yardmaster’s office.

Jack carefully felt along David’s sides and legs, looking for other injuries. He had a long but shallow gash in his calf that was bleeding, in addition to the one on his head, and Jack worried about the possibility of broken ribs. Nothing was immediately obvious, but Jack knew ribs could be cracked and damaged without showing much on the outside.

“David,” he said, gently shaking his friend’s shoulder, trying to stifle the panic in his chest. “David, c’mon, wake up for me.”

Dave moaned softly, but didn’t wake; still, Jack closed his eyes against tears at the small confirmation that Dave was at least conscious enough to give some kind of response. He leaned down so that his mouth was next to David’s ear. “Stay with me, David. You’ll be all right.”

Peterson came rushing back with Doctor Sawyer and Mr. Richardson on his heels. The three men climbed hurriedly into the car, and Sawyer immediately handed Jack some gauze out of his bag.

“Here, Kelly, put that in the cold water and press it against that wound on his head,” Sawyer said briskly. “We’ll get someone to refill your drinking water. Head injuries bleed a lot, and I’ve got to be able to see it before I can stitch it.”

“Thanks,” Jack said roughly, doing as he was told, shifting so that David’s head was resting on his thigh. “I didn’t have anything clean on me, or I would have done it right away.”

Sawyer gave him a sharp look. “Doctoring run in your family, Kelly?”

Jack shook his head. “David’s,” he answered. “His sister’s my fiancée, and their ma’s a good healer.”

“Well, she taught you right about keeping things clean, anyway,” Sawyer acknowledged.

“He’s got another cut on his calf, and I wasn’t sure about his ribs,” Jack said to the doctor, and Sawyer frowned, beginning a more thorough examination of David. When he got to the injured leg, he eased up Dave’s pant leg and started to clean the wound.

“What happened, Kelly?” Richardson asked, his face lined in concern.

“Something didn’t feel right when we got in here, sir,” Jack admitted. “I couldn’t see anything that was wrong right away, and I looked; nothing seemed to be out of place or looked like it was going to fall. We got through unloading most of the pile on this side. But then I called for a water break, and when David walked over to the other side of the car, those two boxes” - and he indicated the two splintered and half-open crates on the floor - “came rolling down from the top of the pile. There was a man up there who ran, and Adams and Cooper went after him. I tried to call out to Dave, but it just happened too fast. I don’t know if whoever it was was just hiding up there, maybe someone sleeping, or if it was deliberate.”

Richardson frowned at the information, and began climbing carefully up the pile of unmoved boxes. When he reached the top, Jack could see him bending over, looking closely at the crates that remained. In the pause during Richardson’s examination, Jack rinsed the gauze in his hand and tried to clean the matted blood from David’s curls. The bleeding had slowed, between the pressure and the cold water, but the wound still oozed dark red. David’s breathing was regular, but he hadn’t stirred again, and Jack had to fight the urge to plead with him to wake.

“They definitely had to have been pushed,” Richardson called down. “There are gouge marks in the tops of these, where the edges of the others would have been. They didn’t just fall; they wouldn’t have damaged the other crates this way if they had.”

Cooper and Adams returned just then, breathless, but with no one in tow.

“He got away, sir,” Cooper said, seeing Richardson in the car. “He was too fast for us, but he did lose his hat.”

Adams held out a black bowler with a red feather in the hat band, and Jack felt as though someone had punched him in the solar plexus.

“I know who that hat belongs to,” Jack said, his voice coming out almost a growl.

Richardson, who had done another cautious climb down the boxes, turned around, brushing off his suit. “Who is it, Kelly?”

“His name’s Oscar Delancy,” Jack hissed. “I’ve known him for years; he hates me. He and his brother used to beat up the little kids at The Refuge, and they worked against us during the newsie strike, as strikebreakers.”

Richardson eyed him. “You think that this was directed at you?”

“It could’ve been. It wouldn’t be the first time the Delancys have tried to get to me by hurting Dave, and the rest of his family,” Jack said, remembering the alley fight that had sent him running to help, fear clawing at him when he had heard Les’ shouts and Sarah’s cries, when he had seen David on the verge of getting brass knuckles to the abdomen, when he had realized in a flash of horror the other unspeakable things they could have done to Sarah, had they wished.

“But you don’t think so,” Richardson said, watching him carefully.

Jack shook his head, trying to breathe through his fury. Something didn’t make sense. “I don’t think it’s that simple, sir. Oscar is a coward; he likes to fight, but he usually picks people smaller than he is. He’s even less gutsy when he’s not with his brother. I can see him riggin’ a surprise attack, but why attack me here? He knows I’m not defenseless. He knows he’s on the union’s turf. This has to be about something bigger than me. If Oscar and Morris wanted to pick a fight with Dave and me, there are a million places they could do it that would be a lot less public and where nobody’d take any notice. If they’re deliberately coming after me, or us, here, there has to be a reason.”

Richardson nodded thoughtfully. “It could be about the union work you both are doing. Could they be working for someone?”

“They could be,” Jack acknowledged. “I can ask around; the newsies will keep an eye out, and someone might have seen them. The Delancys’d gladly take pay from someone to try and hurt me and Dave.”

“Do it carefully,” Richardson cautioned him. “If they’re working for someone and trying to destabilize the railroad unions, in particular, this could get dangerous very quickly. It could be that whoever is paying them is upset about the dockyards or the slaughterhouses, too, but as you say, why would they attack you here unless they were trying to make a point?”

Jack nodded shortly. Sawyer had finished his cleaning and wrapping of David’s leg, and he moved up to examine Dave’s head wound.

“That looks better,” he said approvingly, “but I still think it should have a couple of stitches. And I don’t like that he’s not awake yet, though it’s going to be better for him that he can’t feel this. Peterson, bring me a lantern,” he ordered.

Peterson hurried off again, and Jack gently adjusted David’s head so that the doctor would have better access. Sawyer pulled needle and thread and more gauze from his bag, along with a bottle of whisky. He doused the gauze in the whiskey, ran the needle and thread through it, and then pressed the wet gauze to the wound, causing Dave to twitch and moan again.

“Whiskey’s not a perfect way to sterilize, but it’s a lot better than nothing,” Sawyer said, seeing Jack’s questioning glance. “It will help prevent infection. It would be better if I could shave right around the cut, and make sure no hair gets in the stitches, but I don’t have a razor with me. I don’t want it to open up again, and we have to move him to get him home.”

Jack carefully separated David’s hair around the wound, pulling away as many strands of hair as he could and gently pressing the hair down with his hands to keep it out of Sawyer’s way. He could feel the swelling around the cut on David’s head, and winced reflexively; it was going to hurt terribly when Dave was conscious. Peterson came back just then with the lantern.

“Good,” Sawyer said briskly. “Hold that light as close to his head as you can get without burning any of us, Peterson, and I’ll get these done.”

Sawyer put four stitches in with remarkably steady hands, and aside from the initial pricking of the skin for each stitch, David thankfully didn’t seem to feel much pain. Jack didn’t know whether to be worried or relieved by that. Sawyer tied off the thread and snipped it, and then carefully wound more gauze around David’s head, to keep the wound clean and catch any blood that might still seep out.

“All right,” Sawyer said, bundling everything back into his bag. “Let’s get him up, and find a way to get him home.”

Sawyer knelt on one side of David and put Dave’s arm over his shoulder, and Jack carefully lifted Dave from underneath, using his torso to support his friend. It was awkward, because of the position he’d been sitting in, but eventually they had Dave sitting upright, and Jack could get his feet under him and help Sawyer lift David, putting Dave’s other arm over his own shoulder so that he and Sawyer were each supporting a side.

As they got David to his feet, he groaned, much more loudly than any of his previous hints of consciousness, and his eyes fluttered open. “Jack?” he said groggily, confused. “What happened?”

“Hey, there, Dave,” Jack said gently, relief flooding his veins at seeing David awake, however temporarily. “There was an accident, but we’re going to get you home. You’re okay.”

“You’ve had a nasty knock on the head, Jacobs, and your leg is going to hurt like the devil if it doesn’t already,” Sawyer said bluntly. “I don’t think you have broken ribs, and you’re lucky you don’t. You’re still going to have some bruises, I think. Stay with us a minute.”

The doctor adjusted his grip on Dave, and gestured to Peterson for the lantern, which he then held up to look at David’s eyes.

“Not quite right,” he muttered. “Kelly, is there someone at home who can watch him? He’s going to need someone looking after him.”

“His ma will; she stays at home,” Jack said, fear and anxiety filling him again at Sawyer’s words. “Will he be all right?”

“He should be, but I’d rather be safe than sorry,” Sawyer said. “Head injuries like this aren’t anything to be messed with. He needs to stay awake until his eyes go back to normal, and once he does go to sleep, have his mother wake him every couple of hours.”

Richardson spoke up again, then; Jack had almost forgotten he was there.

“Kelly, you’ve put in most of a day already,” he said. “I’ll put you two in a hansom; Jacobs isn’t in any fit state to walk anywhere. Take him home, make sure his mother understands what he needs, and come back to work in the morning. Jacobs doesn’t come back until he can walk and see straight. His job will be here.”

Jack nodded. “Thank you, sir,” he said gratefully, but Richardson waved away his thanks.

A small smile pulled at the yardmaster’s mouth. “What’s the point of having a union if we can’t put it to use once in a while?” he said. “And in the meantime, I want to know anything you find out about this Delancy and his brother. If you can find out who they’re working for, all the better - but be smart about it.”

“I will, sir,” Jack said grimly.

Sawyer stayed with Jack, helping him support David as they carefully exited the car and walked slowly to the edge of the Yards and 10th Avenue, Richardson strolling with them. Dave was not really able to help himself, beyond using his one good leg a bit, and Jack suspected he was only staying conscious because they were moving. Jack and Sawyer were taking most of his weight, which meant that they were both winded by the time they came to the Yards’ boundary. Richardson went to find a hansom cab, and fortunately waved one down in fairly short order.

“Here,” he said to the driver, handing the man a handful of coins that Jack didn’t even try to count. “Take them wherever this man tells you,” nodding at Jack, “and try not to drive too roughly. We’re getting an injured man home.”

The cabbie nodded, tipping his hat respectfully. “I’ll be glad to help, sir.”

Sawyer and Jack maneuvered David so that he was standing right in front of the step into the cab, and then Sawyer let go, placing David’s hand on the frame of the vehicle so that he could brace himself.

“All right, Dave,” Jack said encouragingly. “One step on your good leg, okay?”

Dave nodded, his face tight with pain, and with an abrupt effort, he stepped into the cab on his unwounded leg, wincing as he brought the bandaged one up into the cab and had to land on it. Jack sprang up behind him and helped get him into the seat before sitting beside him.

“Thank you again, sir,” Jack said, extending a hand to Richardson, and his boss shook firmly, nodding. “And thanks, Doc, for fixing Dave up,” he added sincerely.

“Just doing my job, Kelly,” Sawyer said. “Remember, keep him awake until his eyes are normal, and have his ma wake him every couple of hours overnight. Those stitches will have to come out in a couple of days, too.”

“I’ll make sure Mrs. Jacobs knows,” Jack promised, his heart heavy at the thought of what he was going to tell David’s mother, and even heavier over the fact that he was bringing her son home to her injured. This was exactly what Meyer had asked them to avoid. And Jack had _no_ _idea_ what he was going to say to Sarah; she had asked him to watch out for Dave, and he had failed.

Later. He needed to get David home; he could deal with his emotions later.

“Where to, then?” the cabbie asked, not unkindly, and Jack gave the cross streets of David’s tenement building.

As they started to move, Jack leaned over to make sure Davey was awake; his head was drooping toward his chest, his eyes slipping closed.

“You have to stay awake for me, Dave,” Jack reminded him, nudging his shoulder. “C’mon. Talk to me, Mouth.”

His tone was coaxing and just a little bit teasing, and, he hoped, enough to disguise the worry that was still eating away at his insides. His fury at Oscar, and then the need to help Dave and be useful, had kept some of it at bay, but right now worrying was the only thing he could do besides trying to keep David conscious.

Dave laughed, but it came out more like a tired sigh. “What should I talk to you about?”

“How about a list of ways for me to soak Oscar Delancey when I find him?” Jack said viciously.

Dave’s brow furrowed. “It was Oscar? I don’t remember that.”

“What’s the last thing you do remember?” Jack asked in concern.

“Your shout,” Davey said. “I heard you, I looked up at you, and then - nothing. And then I came around again when you and Sawyer were helping me stand.”

“Well, you got hit by the crate pretty fast after I shouted,” Jack said, “so that makes sense. And you were out for quite a bit there, while we cleaned your head and the doc looked after you. Oscar was up behind the crates we hadn’t unpacked yet, and he pushed down the two that came at you. I don’t know why yet, but I have a feeling this is about more than just him hatin’ the two of us. He’s stupid, but he ain’t that stupid.”

“We’ll find him,” David said, still struggling valiantly to keep his eyes open. “We always do. Or he’ll find us.”

“Yeah,” Jack sighed. He put an arm around David’s shoulders and squeezed. “I’m sorry, Dave. I should’ve been more careful, should’ve checked the car. I knew something was wrong, but I just didn’t think about someone bein’ in there.”

“It’s okay,” Dave reassured him, reaching up to his own shoulder and squeezing Jack’s fingers. “‘M’okay.”

 _No, you’re not, and it’s my fault_ , Jack thought, but he didn’t say it aloud.

“How do you feel about getting married on Christmas?” David said suddenly, and Jack almost stopped breathing.

“ _What?_ ” he said incredulously. Not that they hadn’t talked about wedding dates in general terms, but Christmas was something like five weeks away, and as far as he knew, none of them had brought up the idea of having a wedding that soon.

(And the image David’s words had conjured up was almost too much for him. His gorgeous Sarah, in a wedding dress, and his David, in a navy suit that made his beautiful eyes even more blue, and he could _not_ think about this right now.)

“All of us, gettin’ married,” David clarified, exhaustion and pain making his speech slur. “Do a double weddin’. It would be nice.”

“Seriously, Dave, you’ve got a stitched head and a bleedin’ leg, and you want to talk about wedding dates?” Jack said, finding himself torn between being pained and amused.

“Well, _you_ told me to talk about something,” David retorted, managing to sound both affronted and teasing. “And ‘m not wrong.”

“No, you’re not wrong,” Jack acknowledged softly, smiling a bit. “It would be nice. But let’s make sure you get some sleep, and once you’re actually up and about, we can talk to the girls about it, if you’re serious.”

“I am serious,” David answered, making an obvious effort to speak clearly. “Why not?”

“I imagine Sarah and Kath’ll have about a million reasons why not,” Jack said dryly, as the hansom pulled up to the Jacobs’ apartment building. “We’re here. Let me go get your mama, and we’ll get you upstairs.”

The next half hour or so was entirely taken up with the slow process of getting Dave upstairs and into bed. Mrs. Jacobs, to her credit and Jack’s relief, had been incredibly calm when Jack knocked and explained what had happened and the doctor’s instructions, and she came down immediately to do what she could to help. Dave had to make his way up the five flights of stairs, step by painful step. At least initially, he absolutely refused to be carried, despite Jack’s arguments and his mother’s pleas. Jack helped as much as he could, but it was clearly arduous and exhausting for Davey. It wasn’t until the third floor landing that he swayed, visibly dizzy. Jack hoisted him into a fireman’s carry without a word and brought him up the two remaining flights, ignoring his weak protests.

Despite his thinness and wiry muscle, Davey was still much larger and heavier than Les, and Jack was panting from exertion by the time he carefully deposited Dave on the bed in the Jacobs’ front room. Dave’s mother had pulled back the covers, and she adjusted the pillows so that his head was supported.

“You didn’t have to do that,” Dave said in irritation, though clearly he could barely stand to move as it was, and Jack glared at him.

“Yes, I did. You would have passed out again, Dave, and you know Sawyer said you need to stay awake. There’s no point in you being so stubborn that you hurt yourself, even more than you already are. Just - don’t,” Jack said angrily. He collapsed into the nearest chair, trying to regain his breath, and Mrs. Jacobs moved over to the bed. She removed David’s shoes, checked his bandages, and then brought the lamp to look at his eyes.

“Almost back to normal,” she said quietly, studying her son’s pupils. “Stay awake long enough to drink some willow bark tea and to let me look at your eyes one more time, and I think you can sleep a little bit, _tatelleh_. I’m going to get some willow bark from Mrs. Manischewitz; I’ll be right back.”

She kissed David’s forehead before heading for the door, and Jack pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers, trying desperately not to look at David and give away how terrified he had been, how much he felt. With his eyes closed, he saw David crumpling to the floor, over and over, and that didn’t help.

He realized suddenly that David had gone quiet and jerked up in his chair, getting on his feet and going over to the bed. Dave’s eyes had fallen shut, though his breathing was shallow, and Jack reached out and shook his shoulders.

“No, no, no, Davey, c’mon. Stay awake,” he said urgently. “Don’t fall asleep on me now. Don’t you dare.”

David’s eyes fluttered open again, and he looked hazily at Jack. “Sorry. Tired,” he murmured.

“I know,” Jack sighed. He sat down on the edge of the bed and put an arm around David’s shoulders. “I know you are. Just a few more minutes, okay? Tell me more about your wedding idea. Why Christmas?”

David gave a quick shake of his head, as though he was trying to clear it. “It’s a holiday, not one of our holidays, but one of the only ones we get off from work. Christmas is a Tuesday, so it’s not the sabbath. And we would have the Sunday before off from work, too, so it would almost be a holiday, having two days so close together.”

It was a slightly rambling and incoherent explanation, but Jack was able to follow it. Christmas wasn’t a Jewish religious day, nor did it fall, this year, on the Jewish sabbath. They were all given Sundays off at work, and Christmas Day as well, so they would have a Sunday and Tuesday off in short succession, which was rare. They would have to work the Monday in between, but the two free days would give them just a little more time to celebrate, to be with their spouses, to be together and enjoy the fact that they were all family, officially. Finally.

Jack nodded, considering. “It’s a good idea, but” - and he managed to grin at Dave - “I still say you’re going to have a hard time convincin’ Sarah and Kath.”

David disagreed. “Unh-uh. Walkin’ Mouth, right? I can talk them into it.”

Jack laughed, quick but genuine, giving David’s shoulders another squeeze. “Sure you can.”

Mrs. Jacobs came back then, carrying both a small pouch and a miniature teapot with a handle. “Thank goodness Mrs. Manischewitz keeps so many healing supplies. I don’t know what the rest of us in the building and the neighborhood would do without her. She brewed some tea for you to drink right away, Davey, and I paid her for some extra bark.”

Jack’s brow furrowed. “How does she have bark to spare? It can’t be that easy to find here in the city.”

“It isn’t,” Mrs. Jacobs confirmed. “It takes an incredible amount of time to find the herbs and things that she uses, and she must either collect them herself or pay others who collect them. I know she brings in a lot by doing so much healing and midwifery, but I can’t imagine how time consuming it must be.”

“How did you know what to ask for?” Jack asked curiously. “I know you’re good at healin’, but I never asked where you learned what to do.”

“I learned most of it from my own mother,” Mrs. Jacobs said. “She was a skilled healer and midwife, too. I never wanted to make income from it, though, just have it as a useful skill. I don’t know as much as she did, but I know more than enough for everyday illnesses and minor emergencies.”

Esther went to the kitchen and retrieved a teacup, then filled it out of the small pot of willow bark tea. David obligingly reached out his hands, and Jack moved back to the chair, so that he wouldn’t accidentally jostle Dave as he tried to drink. Dave’s hands shook, though, as he took the cup, and his mother gently steadied them as he sipped.

Mrs. Jacobs made Dave drink two cups of the painkilling brew, and checked his eyes again, before she declared him fit to sleep. She tucked him in carefully, making sure none of his injuries would be disturbed if he moved, and Dave was asleep almost before she was finished.

“I’ll wake him again in a couple of hours, Mrs. Jacobs,” Jack volunteered softly. “Les is going to be home soon, and you’ll be in the middle of supper. I’ll get you if anything looks wrong.”

Mrs. Jacobs stopped by his chair and squeezed his shoulder with a smile. “Jack, how many times have I told you to call me Esther? And that would be lovely, if you don’t mind checking on him. Come have a regular cup of tea, yourself. You look done in, dear.”

Jack obligingly followed her to the kitchen, leaning against the window in weariness while she put together tea for both of them.

“Jack, this isn’t your fault,” Mrs. Jacobs said kindly, pressing the hot cup of tea into his hand. “Accidents happen, and it sounds like there just wasn’t time to prevent this one.”

“Actually checking the crates and climbing around the car would have prevented it,” Jack said bitterly. “It wasn’t an accident. If I’d thought to do more than just look, Dave wouldn’t be hurt right now. I’d have found Oscar and taken him to Richardson, and none of this would have happened.”     

Mrs. Jacobs laid a hand on his cheek, a motherly gesture that made Jack’s chest ache, even more than it did already. “And if you’d done that, he could have hurt you, and he might still have hurt David. David will mend, and you aren’t hurt. I’m glad it wasn’t any worse.”

Jack couldn’t agree with her, but he didn’t have the heart or the energy to argue, either, so he simply nodded, taking a sip of the steaming hot tea in his hands. “Thank you for the tea, Esther.” He paused, shook his head, and gave her a rueful smile. “I can’t do it. It doesn’t sound right, or seem respectful.”

Mrs. Jacobs smiled back affectionately. “Thank you for that, dear.” She watched him for a moment, then said softly, “You _are_ part of our family now, Jack. You mean so much to all of us. I care about you just as much as I do about my own children. If you would like to . . . you could call me Mama, as they do.”

Jack swallowed hard, and for the second time in the last few hours, he felt his eyes burn with tears. He remembered so little of his mother, and Mrs. Jacobs was so good to him, but . . .  

“I would never try to replace your own mother, you know,” Mrs. Jacobs added perceptively. “But I hope - I hope she would be glad that you have another mother who cares for you, now.”

“She - she would be. I think,” Jack said, his voice a soft, pained rasp. He swallowed again, trying to force down the lump in his throat. He had thought of his mother in so many dark moments of his life . . . but he had been so little when he last saw her that sometimes he wondered whether his memories of her were even real, or something he had simply conjured up for his own comfort.

“Can I ask what happened to her?” Mrs. Jacobs questioned gently.

“She . . . she died when I was about five,” Jack said, concentrating on the toes of his boots and trying to summon the few mental images he had of his mother. “She was sick for a while before that. It was hard for her to breathe, and she had this horrible cough that just kept gettin’ worse. We couldn’t afford to get a doctor or go nowhere. It was just her an’ me, most of the time, and she sewed shirts - got paid by the piece. When she was too tired during the day to be up anymore - and then, when she got so sick she couldn’t be - she would sew shirts in bed, as long as she could. I would curl up next to her and she would tell me stories until I fell asleep. She always tucked the blanket around me and kissed my forehead. ”

He risked a glance at Mrs. Jacobs, and wasn’t surprised to see that her eyes were wet; his own were damp. Of course she would feel sympathy for his mother, when she loved her own children so much.

“She had a nice smile, and she almost always smiled when she was takin’ care of me. She looked like me, a bit, I think,” Jack said quietly. “Her hair was lighter than mine, more gold, but I think that’s how I have the light streaks in my hair, and her eyes were brown.”

Mrs. Jacobs dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief and took a sip of her tea before she tried to speak. “It was probably tuberculosis,” she said softly. “I know that doesn’t really help you, to know what her illness was, but it’s very common, and very deadly if it can’t be treated. You’re lucky you didn’t get it as well.”

“It didn’t feel lucky at the time,” Jack said, closing his eyes. He’d never talked to anyone about his mother, much less about what came after - waking up one morning to discover that she wouldn’t wake; spending days with a neighbor while they looked for his father; the terrifying two years with a father who was drunk whenever he could be and who was violent even when sober, and who finally went to jail for assault and murder; being taken to The Refuge when he got caught stealing food. He couldn’t bring himself to talk about any of that.

But then there had been Medda, and the newsies, and Kath and Les, and David and Sarah. He could never regret living if it meant that he was alive to love and be loved by them. And Mrs. Jacobs really did treat him like her own son. While simply calling her “Mama” would hurt too much, remind him too often of his own mother, he could, maybe . . .

He opened his eyes and smiled a genuine smile at Mrs. Jacobs. “I feel pretty lucky now, though. I have an incredible family, Mama Jacobs.”

Mama Jacobs gave a little laugh, even as more tears trickled down her cheeks. “You blessed boy,” she said, coming over to him. She reached out and hugged him, kissing his cheek. “I am proud to be your Mama Jacobs,” she said warmly, and Jack could tell by her face that she understood. “Now, finish that tea, and then go sit. Les will be home any minute, and if you can keep him away from Davey and corral him into doing his homework, you will be doing me a favor.”

“Consider it done,” Jack nodded. He drank the last few mouthfuls of tea, and right on cue, he heard the rattle of the door. He hurriedly set his teacup in the sink and went to head off Les.

As Les opened the door, Jack stepped into his line of sight and put a finger to his lips, pointing toward Dave. Les halted abruptly, his normally headlong pace stopped by the surprise of seeing Jack at home in the late afternoon. Following Jack’s gesture, he looked over to the bed and took in his wounded and sleeping big brother, frowning in response. He shut the door quietly behind him and set his books on the table before following Jack back to the kitchen.

“What happened to Davey?” he whispered anxiously. “And why are you back so early?”

“I had to get your brother here,” Jack responded. “And the short version is, there was a rigged accident at the yards, courtesy of Oscar Delancy. Dave’ll be all right, but he’s going to need a few days.”

“That . . . that _scum_ ,” Les said furiously, with all the vicious vehemence of being eleven. “That _snake_.”

“Les!” his mother chided him sharply. “Language.”

“He _is_ scum,” Les insisted rebelliously. “Why’s he keep coming after us?”

“I don’t know yet, but I’m going to find out,” Jack promised him. “Go do your homework, and I’ll tell you what the plan is afterward.”

Les’ face lit up. “You have a plan?”

Jack nodded. “The beginnin’s of one, anyway. Try not to wake your brother.” He leaned over conspiratorially to whisper in Les’ ear. “He _is_ scum.”

Les grinned at Jack, made his way back to the table, and took out his books, and Jack went over to the loveseat, where he could keep an eye on David and Les at the same time. 

Watching the slow rise and fall of David’s chest as he slept, Jack was struck suddenly with a terrible thought.

_Kath._

Oh, God, Kath. Everything had happened so quickly that he hadn’t thought of her until right this minute. Sarah would be home for supper, but Jack didn’t even know for certain whether Kath was coming back - sometimes she got so caught up in her work with Denton that she stayed at the _Sun_ offices. She had no way of knowing what had happened.

He rose again and went back to the kitchen, where Mama Jacobs was just beginning to contemplate the options for dinner.

“Mama Jacobs, we need to tell Kath,” he said quietly, still mindful of waking David up. “Or at least, we do if she isn’t planning to come back. Do you know if she was goin’ to be here for supper? I kind of got the feeling this morning that she might be, but I don’t know.”

Mrs. Jacobs looked up, her eyes stricken. “Oh, of course we do! She said before she left that she was hoping to be back, but you know how she gets. We could send a note by the late post.”

Jack thought about that. Despite the fact that he and Davey were making so much more money now, it still went against the grain to spend the money for paper and postage. He could send one of the newsies - Hannah was the closest seller in the neighborhood - but it was coming up on the late edition, and she was probably already waiting for her papes down at Park Row. He wouldn’t want her to lose income during a time when she should be selling, anyway. He could give her the money that would have gone to postage, but it wouldn’t make up for selling a whole stack of papers. He could go himself, but then Mama Jacobs would be trying to watch David, keep track of Les, and cook dinner simultaneously, and it would only tire her even more. The post was probably the most efficient thing - businesses still had at least one more delivery today.

He nodded to Mrs. Jacobs. “I can write Kath a note.” He went to the sideboard that was on the wall near the dining room table, and opened the drawer where they usually kept spare bits of paper and the ink bottle.

He drew out a small blank sheet and carefully wrote the following:

_Kath,_

_There was an accident at the yards this afternoon. David is hurt, but he’s mostly fine; I got him home to Mrs. Jacobs, and we’re both keeping an eye on him. If you can make it back for supper, he would be glad to see you, and I can explain more of what happened._

_Don’t worry, please. He’s banged up, but not in any danger. Doc Sawyer and Mama Jacobs took good care of him._

_Jack_

Not for the first time, Jack thanked his stars that he could write. His printing wasn’t anywhere near as pretty as the penmanship that David, Kath, and Sarah had all learned, but it was neat and clear. He folded up the note and hastily sealed it with wax, using the table lamp to melt the wax taper, then wrote Kath’s name and _The Sun_ ’s address on the front.

“Les,” he said quietly, and the boy looked up from where he was working on sums. Jack held out the letter. “Can you take this downstairs and wait for the mail carrier to come by? It should be soon. This is for Kath, to let her know about Davey. I would go see her myself, but I have to wake your brother in a minute, and keep an eye on him while your ma cooks dinner. And don’t think this gets you out of finishing your homework,” Jack said firmly, though he was still carefully keeping his voice down. “As soon as you hand off the letter, you come back up, sit back down, and make sure those sums are done. But consider this a break.”

Les sighed. “Okay.” He put out a hand for the letter as he stood up, and Jack gave it to him. “Seriously, why do I need to know all of this stuff?” he grumbled.

Jack sat in one of the chairs, so that he was closer to eye level with Les. “Do you know who taught me to read and write?” he asked, and Les shook his head. “Kloppman. I was too young to be in school when my mama died, and since there was no one to look after me and I had to feed myself, I couldn’t go to school. Kloppman taught me and some of the other boys in the afternoons, in between selling editions, just so’s we could read the headlines and the articles, and write the headlines up on the board. He had us copy lines from his ledgers to learn to write. I liked it, so I read everything I could find, newspapers, broadsides, street signs. I can do as much math as you can, probably up to a grade or two above where you are, but only because I had Racetrack teach me, and he’s always been good with numbers.” He looked at Les gravely, and the boy was regarding him solemnly. “I’m glad I know as much as I do, and I teach myself however I can, but I wish I knew more. I didn’t have the chance to go to school like you and Davey, Les. Don’t waste it. Promise?”

Les nodded slowly. “Promise. I’m sorry, Jack. I guess I never thought about what it might be like if I _couldn’t_ go again, ever. I like learning things; I just hate all the memorizing and sitting still and being inside for hours.”

“I know,” Jack said, ruffling his hair. “You’ve got a lot of energy, and that’s hard. But try to focus on what you’re learnin’, and not what else you could be doing.”

“Okay. I’ll try,” Les said with a small smile, and then he slipped out the door, still careful not to slam the door and wake his brother.

“You handled that well,” Mama Jacobs said approvingly, and Jack jumped slightly; he hadn’t noticed her come in from the kitchen.

“He’s a good kid,” Jack said. “He’s just energetic and doesn’t know what to do with it all; a lot of the newsies are like that at that age. One of the few good things about sellin’ papes is that it does make you tired, sometimes too tired.”

Mama Jacobs nodded, her expression contemplative, and Jack went over to David. He shook his friend’s shoulder gently, and Dave stirred, his eyes opening slowly.

“Hey, Dave,” Jack said softly, smiling. “Just checking in on you, okay? You still with me?”

“You aren’t getting rid of me that easily,” David said sleepily, trying to smile back. “Someone needs to keep you from acting before you think.”

Jack chuckled. “Do you really keep me from doing that, or do you just try to control the aftermath?”

David woke up a bit more as he thought about that. “Fair point,” he conceded, managing a real smile.

“Your eyes still look pretty good,” Jack said. He’d been watching as they talked, and the centers of Dave’s eyes were still the same size, and he was able to focus on Jack with apparently no trouble. “Do you feel okay?”

Dave considered. “My head and my leg hurt, but I don’t feel like I’m going to be sick. Just sore.”

“Okay. That’s good. You can go back to sleep if you need to. Sarah and Kath will be here in a couple of hours, and we’ll get you some food and more tea,” Jack said.

“‘Kay,” Dave said, his eyes already starting to fall shut. “Sounds good.” Jack started to move away, but David reached out and caught his hand, making Jack still in surprise, his heart hammering.

“Jack. Thanks for getting me home,” he sighed. “And stop beating yourself up. It wasn’t your fault.”  

“It was,” Jack retorted, shaking his head. “But it was Oscar’s fault, too, and he’s going to pay for it. I swear, Dave, we are going to figure out what he’s up to, and I’m goin’ to make him wish he’d never been born.” He tightened his grip around David’s hand, and tried desperately not to read anything into the fact that David hadn’t let go. “He doesn’t get to come after my family again.”

  


**Historical Notes**

1\. As it turns out, there is a dearth of accessible and reliable information on the early railroad unions. Despite the numerous scholarly resources I have access to, I wasn’t able to find much that was very detailed. But, I will tell you what I can verify. The early railroad unions were craft unions, rather than industrial unions, which basically means that they were sorted by job type, rather than having all railroad workers in one big union, as many industrial unions did. The railroad had four major unions in 1900 (though there were also a number of others): The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen (which became the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen in 1907), the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen (this was the largest, and the one Jack and Davey would have belonged to, as yard workers), and the Order of Railway Conductors of America. The other famous railroad union, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, was not established until 1925 (and nearly all of the porters, by that point, were African-American). The railroad brotherhoods did indeed practice exclusion of women, immigrants (including Jews), and African-Americans. For Dave to have the chance to work at a railroad job is rare.The garment workers of the ILGWU, in contrast, were an industrial union, and accepted anyone who worked at any job in the industry, regardless of job or status. *Since completing this chapter (of course), I have actually found the scholarly book about this. It’s amazing that there is only one, and even more amazing to me that it was published only nine years ago. It is by Paul Michael Taillon, and is, tellingly, titled _Good, Reliable White Men: Railroad Brotherhoods, 1877-1917_.

2\. The railroad yards I am referencing here, geographically, are the West Side Yards, which sit between 10th and 12th Avenues, and West 30th and West 33rd Streets. The Hudson River Railroad had a line running down 11th Avenue starting in 1849, and it ended at a terminal/depot at 32nd Street, which was the original beginning of the West Side Yards. Cornelius Vanderbilt merged the HRR and the New York Central railroad in 1869, and the yards gradually expanded and were used as a freight terminal.

3\. The railroad unions won quite a number of concessions from the federal government in the Erdman Act of 1898. First, the Act prevented railroads from either firing employees who joined a union or from refusing to hire a prospective employee who was a union member. Second, it also provided for mediation and arbitration in labor disputes; these were voluntary, but binding if all sides agreed to the arbitration. Finally, the Act required railroads to bargain collectively with the unions. I’ve simplified the legal technicalities a bit here; technically, the Erdman Act only applied to employees who worked on the moving trains, those who literally traveled between states, like conductors, firemen, brakemen, and telegraphers. It would not have applied to yard workers.

4\. I chose Richardson’s name deliberately; the name is a combination of “power” and “brave” in Old English, and I wanted to evoke the idea that this man is unusual in how he thinks, and that he doesn’t care about the prejudices that are so common among so many of the railroad men. The same goes for Cooper, Adams, and Peterson, in the sense that I wanted names that were clearly _not_ the names of immigrants. Even Jack stands a little apart from them, as both Kelly and Sullivan are Irish names, and there was a great deal of anti-Irish prejudice in this period as well. Spot would have suffered the from the same prejudice. Race’s Italian background is also deliberately mentioned, as Italians at the time were seen as more Eastern European, and like the Irish, many of them were Catholic, so Italians were not highly regarded, either. There is a whole academic literature on whiteness as a cultural category, and significant arguments have been put forward to show that Italians, Irish, and Jews were not necessarily considered white at the turn of the 20th century. In the racial prejudice ladder, they were somewhere between African-Americans and whites. Denton’s comment to David that Richardson doesn’t care about “what religion you practice” also shows Denton’s more progressive social perspective; a less liberal man probably would have said “what race you are.” Even if Italians, Irish, and Jews were considered white on census records and by social institutions, they weren’t necessarily considered white by other white European immigrants or native-born white Americans. The seminal works on this subject are David Roediger’s _The Wages of Whiteness_ and _Working Toward Whiteness_ , Noel Ignatiev’s _How the Irish Became White_ , Matthew Frye Jacobson’s _Whiteness of a Different Color_ , and Thomas Guglielmo’s _White On Arrival_ , though at this point there are many other works as well. Melissa R. Klapper talks about racial prejudice from the perspectives of immigrant parents and children in _Small Strangers: The Experiences of Immigrant Children in America, 1880-1925_. 

5\. The old type of boxcar was either 11 or 13 feet high, and in 1900 they would have had to be unloaded by hand. Shipping containers included large wooden crates and barrels, as well as smaller wooden crates and other types of containers. The cars would have to be unloaded one crate and barrel at a time, onto a cargo platform, and from there the cargo would have been moved to other trains or loaded into wagons and distributed across the city or town, depending on where the train was stopped. (Remember, in 1900 we are still a few years away from having motor cars). If you can imagine wooden crates stacked 11 feet high, and think about how much momentum two of them would have when pushed, and the fact that they would inevitably break and splinter, you can see how it would be very easy for someone to get seriously hurt. I am only guessing that, in a boxcar with lots of cargo, the men might have used ropes and pulleys to more easily bring down the crates from the tops of the stacks.

6\. Having Peterson fetch Richardson to respond to the accident is actually skipping several people in the chain of authority, and again, that was a choice I made in order to simplify things in the plot. Figuring out all of the jobs in a 1900s rail yard was not easy, but here is what I was able to find: A yardmaster was in charge of all rail traffic in and out of the yard, sometimes in charge of the traffic on an entire section of rail line, overseeing and keeping track of switching trains from one line to another, and scheduling train maintenance. (The switchmen were the men who did the actual physical work of switching the trains on the tracks). Since Jack, Dave, Peterson, Cooper, and Adams are car workers, they might be part of a section crew (a group of workers that assist in running the yard), and they would have had a section foreman over them. There also probably would have been a freight traffic manager, who (not surprisingly) would have been specifically in charge of freight traffic. Either the section foreman or freight traffic manager would have probably been the person to notify in the case of an accident, but having one character who is a little higher up in the chain works better in terms of plot.

7\. Doctor Sawyer’s comment about Mrs. Jacobs teaching Jack correctly, and the discussion of Mrs. Manischewitz, healing, and midwifery further down, actually has a lot of history behind it. In the second half of the nineteenth century, the male medical profession went out of their way to discredit traditional female healers and midwives. They wanted doctors to be seen as highly trained professionals, and wanted degrees to be required, and so midwives (who often learned through apprenticeship) didn’t meet their qualifications. There was also a tug-of-war over the fact that many women still went to female midwives for childbirth, and doctors felt that childbirth should also fall under their jurisdiction. So Doc Sawyer’s admission is a bit grudging; he would probably _really_ frown at Mrs. Manischewitz and her semi-professional status as healer and midwife for the neighborhood. Many immigrants, though, continued to use female midwives and healers, not least because they couldn’t afford doctor’s fees, and because healers were often women of their own community. Melissa R. Klapper talks about this in _Small Strangers: The Experiences of Immigrant Children in America, 1880-1925_. Not incidentally, this whole back-and-forth between doctors and female healers/midwives is how abortion becomes a public, political issue. Women traditionally passed information about abortion to other married women, and it was almost always the local midwife who assisted women with herbal remedies that induced abortion. It was completely private, not talked about with either unmarried women or men, so it never occurred to most men that it was even happening. There were several women who set up abortion clinics in NYC, the most famous of whom was Madame Restell, looking to help women who had moved to the city and were therefore cut off from their local community healer. It’s when abortion becomes public in this way that both male doctors and men in general freak out and decide it should be regulated or banned altogether. The books I mentioned in an earlier chapter, Horowitz’s _Rereading Sex_ , and Gordon’s _The Moral Property of Women_ , are great books to read if you are curious about this whole subject.

8\. We’ve known about concussions and their general effects for centuries, even if not by their current name. Keeping a patient awake, especially if their eyes were in any way abnormal, was standard practice until pretty recently. Willow bark contains an agent similar to aspirin, and is an anti-inflammatory as well; it’s a very traditional herbal remedy. Surgeons had started using catgut for sutures by 1900, but silk or cotton thread was still common for stitches, and alcohol (of pretty much any kind) was fairly commonly used for an antiseptic - again, because sterile water was difficult to come by, unless you had enough advance notice to boil it. Even the drinking water that the crew had, that Jack uses to clean David’s head, wouldn’t necessarily have been clean in the sense of being free from bacteria, which is why Sawyer turns around and uses the whiskey. I found the results of one lab experiment online that showed that applications of whiskey cut down bacteria by roughly half. Had the doctor had grain alcohol in a bottle, that would have worked even better. However, alcohol can also apparently damage live tissue, even though it kills bacteria, which is why, of course, we don’t use it in modern medical settings. We have much better solutions, thank goodness! In 1900, though, we didn’t have either profuse amounts of clean water or our modern antibacterial salves, so whiskey is one of the best available things. Using the whiskey on the needle and thread is actually a better approach - it would kill a good portion of the bacteria on the needle and thread itself, and there’s no live tissue for the whiskey to damage.

9. _Tatelleh_ : little man, precious boy.

10\. Christmas Day in 1900 was indeed a Tuesday, and Sundays were generally given as a day off for church, even in the sweatshops, although some workers would work on Sunday to make extra money. I have found some conflicting information about whether weddings could be held on the Jewish sabbath, which runs from sundown Friday until evening on Saturday,  but it seems that at least currently, it is not done very much, even though it may have been done in the past. I also read that both Chanukah and Tuesdays are considered auspicious times for Jewish weddings, and Chanukah ran from sundown on Dec. 16th - Dec. 23rd in 1900. The 23rd is also the Sunday before Christmas that year. In other words, the last day of Chanukah (which is also the Sunday before Christmas) is the Sunday everyone would have off.

11\. Tuberculosis was one of the worst and most contagious diseases in existence prior to the 19th century, and it still has not been eradicated, just more controlled. There are still millions of new cases reported every year. Prior to 1800, it killed around 1 in 7 people. It wasn’t until 1882 that Robert Koch discovered the bacteria that causes the disease. Before there were effective antibiotics for TB, patients were often prescribed fresh air, exercise, and better food - which, not surprisingly, were all hard to come by in tenements. In addition, tenements had notoriously poor sanitation and waste disposal, and often highly unsanitary water. Lots of TB patients were also quarantined in sanitariums.


	6. Katherine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, everyone. I'm sorry for the long wait! It's been a rough six weeks - a lot going on IRL, and my mental landscape has not been the best. Busy + stressed + feeling inadequate does not = productive writer. But I hope you enjoy this! And in good news, I have a sizable portion of the next chapter written, because I originally thought it was going to be part of this one. So hopefully the wait will not be as long next time. As always, I have to thank WickedforGood13 and Nagaem_C for being incredible betas and for encouraging me and loving this story, and I have to thank Tuppenny this time, too, for giving me love and encouragement about this fic at a moment when I was feeling particularly low. Love to you all!

**Chapter Six: Katherine**

 

Katherine went into work feeling mostly happy. After Sarah had run out the door (and Kath sent up a silent prayer that her friend had made it to the factory on time; the last thing Sarah needed was to lose a day’s pay by being locked out, or be fired for being late), Katherine had gotten dressed herself, enlisting the kind help of Mrs. Jacobs to do up her corset. Then she had helped Mrs. Jacobs in her turn by chivvying Les out the door.

Katherine smiled, thinking about Les as she waited for the elevator in the lobby of _The Sun_. Even in the mornings he was energetic, but he tended to dawdle and get distracted by everything, from being unable to find his schoolbooks to staring at a bug on the windowsill. He listened to Kath, however - Katherine suspected he had a bit of a schoolboy crush on her. She laughed when Les mock-grumbled about having a second older sister; he was far less serious in his complaining with her than he was with Sarah. If his willingness to listen to her resulted in making Mrs. Jacobs’ life easier, Katherine was happy to oblige.

The elevator arrived, and Katherine nodded a greeting to the operator as she stepped inside. He started them moving toward the newsroom floor, and Kath’s smile faltered a bit as her thoughts returned to David. She was inexpressibly glad that he had finally confided in her, had trusted her enough to tell her the truth, but the fear and then the anguish on his face, both of them evident in the fierce grip he had held her in, had torn at her heart. She loved him so dearly, and it hurt her terribly that he had been carrying around so much grief without anyone to share the burden.

Well, he had someone to share it with now; that was one of the promises she kept both as his friend and as his fiancée. And if she and Sarah had their way, neither of their boys would have to grieve over or pine for each other ever again.

Katherine squared her shoulders as the elevator door opened again, and she strode to her desk with both renewed purpose and renewed optimism. This morning had been a step in the right direction; she had faith that they all could get the rest of the way there, together. And when her faith faltered, Sarah would surely be there to catch her and shore her up. Sarah’s capacity for faith and compassion never failed to astound her.

Katherine’s hands were sorting through her mail while her thoughts were busy, and she paused at a missive that had more careful printing than most, and was missing postage besides. She turned it over and tore open the seal.

The inside contained another sealed letter, with “Smalls” printed on the front, and a short note for her:

_Katherine,_

_Ma said that if you’d like to talk to her, you can come today. 39th St. and 9th Ave., third floor, back right corner apartment. I think she is really hoping that your story can get Smalls home._

_Like I said, don’t think too badly of us. We do the best we can._

_Skittery_

Kath swallowed. Skittery must have given the letter to one of the office boys to put on her desk, when he came to get his papers. The weight of what she was doing suddenly settled on her with a vengeance. Skittery’s family was depending on her - depending on her to bring their son and brother home. If she accomplished nothing else, she needed to get Smalls back to his mother.

She read the address again and felt her nervousness increase. 39th and 9th was Hell’s Kitchen - she could never go there alone. The Bowery was one thing; it was somewhat safe if one was careful. But Hell’s Kitchen was rife with gangs and petty thieves, and it had only been getting worse. Even David and Jack were extra cautious when they went to meet with the dockworkers and slaughterhouse workers there. She could end up unconscious in an alley with no one the wiser.

She kept Skittery’s letter in her hand, leaving the rest of the mail on her desk for the moment, and headed for Denton’s office. To her relief, his door was still ajar; he hadn’t left for a story or an interview yet. She knocked lightly.

“Denton?” she called.

“Come on in, Katherine!” he called back, and so she pushed open the door and went in.

“Denton, would you have some time to come with me to an interview this afternoon? I’m in a bit of a spot,” she said hesitantly. She proffered the letter, which Denton took, and she watched his eyebrows climb up his forehead as he read.

“You see the problem,” Katherine said apologetically. “I’m no slouch, but I’m not dumb, either. I can’t walk into a tenement at 39th and 9th by myself.”

Denton looked up from the letter then. “To tell you the truth, Kath, I’m not sure _I_ would walk into a tenement at 39th and 9th by myself. I’m actually grateful you asked; I know how you like to prove yourself. Good to know you have at least some self-preservation instincts.”

“Hey!” Katherine protested, but she couldn’t help but smile at his teasing, and Denton smiled back at her in response.

“I have an interview to get to this morning, but we could go after lunch,” Denton said. “Still in the daylight, and during work hours. We should be fine, as long as we don’t ruffle any feathers.”

Katherine nodded. “All right. I’ll plan on it.”

“Poor Skittery,” Denton said quietly. “I had no idea this was where his family lived. It’s no wonder he stays in the lodging house.”

“I know,” Katherine agreed softly. “I think Smalls must have lived with the newsies, too, before he got taken to The Refuge. And who wouldn’t, if your family was in one of the worst areas of the city?”

“Sometimes I forget that even the lodging house is an escape,” Denton acknowledged soberly. “Or a place of safety.”

He was silent for another minute before handing the letter back to Katherine. “Find me after lunch,” he said, glancing at the clock. “I’ll have to head out now if I’m going to do an interview and get back.”

“Sure thing, boss,” Kath said with a smile, and Denton shook his head at her as she left, even as a reluctant grin pulled at his mouth.

Katherine considered his words on the way back to her desk. She had never asked Denton how he had come by his education, but her mentor and friend clearly had more formal education in his background than many of the self-made and self-educated reporters in the newsroom. She wondered, sometimes, whether he had been so willing to mentor her and partner with her because she was like him. Aside from his obvious woman’s rights leanings, did he see something of himself in her? Had he, as she suspected, also given up a fairly privileged existence to become a reporter?  Moments like the one she had just witnessed led her to believe that his background was not unlike her own. Denton had reminded himself that what looked like poverty and exploitation to him, at the lodging house - and which _was,_ clearly, poverty and exploitation in wider social and economic terms - could actually be a step _up_ for some of the boys who came from even worse situations. Even if Denton had not grown up with the kind of wealth she had, she would bet a week’s wages that his parents had made a comfortable living and had seen to it that their son had as much education as they could provide.

However Denton had come to be the reporter he was, she could never be grateful enough to him for everything he had done to help her. Without his mentorship, friendship, and defense of her work, her road to being a professional reporter would have been much more difficult.

Going through her remaining mail, she found one other letter of immediate importance. The new warden of The Refuge, Mr. Collins, had written to say that she would be welcome to come and visit the next day.

That was excellent. If she went in already having a sense of Smalls’ family situation, as well as what little she knew of Jack’s experience, she should have a much better perspective on what was happening - good or bad - at The Refuge.

Katherine sat down at her desk and composed a quick note, telling Mr. Collins that she would be happy to come the following day. She made sure to put it with the outgoing mail before settling back down and composing a list of questions she wanted to ask the warden.

The rest of the morning passed quickly, as Katherine went through the newsroom files and read the stories on The Refuge from the paper’s back issues. She made more notes for herself about its history, the various investigations that had happened over the years, and the previous wardens. Before she knew it, it was the lunch hour.

After eating a quick bite from the stash of fruit in her desk, Kath made sure that she had a new pad of paper and several pencils. She slipped them into her bag, at the same time counting her change and ensuring that she had enough for the trolleys to Hell’s Kitchen and back, as well as her trolley home. She needed to go back to her father’s tonight, if only for a fresh change of clothes. Goodness knew what her skirt, especially, would look like after walking through Hell’s Kitchen.

* * *

 

The ride to Hell’s Kitchen was uneventful; after catching the 9th Avenue trolley line, Katherine and Denton chatted about other stories that were in progress, and she caught Denton up on the lives of the Jacobs and the newsies.

As they approached their destination, however, the first thing Katherine noticed was the smell. She had never actually been to Hell’s Kitchen, but the rancid stench of the district was the stuff of legend in the city. Abattoir Place, the west side of 39th, held the slaughterhouses, and over on 38th were the fat-rendering plants and soap factories, with the result that the odors of blood and melting animal fat permeated the entire neighborhood.

She tried to surreptitiously breathe through her mouth.

It got worse when they stepped off the trolley. Katherine grimaced and lifted her skirts as much as she could. Mixed in with the refuse in the gutters of the street was a literal stream of blood. She could hear the bawling of the poor animals as they waited to be killed.

“My God,” she said under her breath to Denton. “People _live_ here?”

Denton nodded. “In a manner of speaking,” he murmured. “But never forget, Kath, if they’re here, it’s usually because they have nowhere else to go.”

Katherine swallowed hard against the lump that appeared in her throat; she honestly wasn’t sure whether it was from the desire to cry or vomit. Denton was right. The people here were people, too, people who had families. And no matter how bad the situation of Skittery’s family, they still loved each other fiercely. She had a job to do.

The pair of them carefully picked their way to the tenement building on the corner. Katherine tried to ignore the hostile, lascivious stares of a pack of boys on the curb; she was suddenly very glad that she had obeyed her own impulses and brought Denton with her.

When they entered the tenement, Katherine _did_ gag. The smell of trash was overwhelming, coming, Katherine guessed, from the courtyard of the building. The hallway was dark, even on this bright winter afternoon, unlit by so much as a gas jet. Katherine went up the stairs after Denton, feeling as much as seeing her way up the staircase. The smell of cheap alcohol was distinguishable from the garbage by the time they reached the second floor, and Katherine spotted several broken bottles littering the hallway.

When they reached the door of Skittery’s mother’s apartment, Denton stood aside, letting Katherine take the lead. He also positioned himself so that he was watching the hall and the stairs.

Katherine knocked on the door and waited. Moments later, she heard the lock turn, and a tired-looking woman opened the door only a little, peering at Katherine.

“Be you Miss Katherine?” she asked cautiously.

“I am,” Katherine said, offering a smile. “I’m glad to meet you.”

Katherine had a horrible realization that she didn’t know Skittery’s mother’s name, not even her surname. It had never occurred to her to ask Skittery. The woman narrowed her eyes at Denton.

“And who are you?” she said suspiciously.

“Bryan Denton,” Denton said, touching his hat. “I work with Katherine at _The Sun_. I’m just here to make sure she stays safe. And you are?”

“Mrs. Goodwin,” the woman said tersely, and Katherine sent a silent prayer of thanks to Denton. “Skittery’s mentioned you, too, I think, Mr. Denton. The two of you had better come in. Folks here don’t like strangers.”

Katherine walked in when Mrs. Goodwin opened the door, and she felt Denton follow behind her. The inside of the apartment was just as depressing as the outside. The one window in the room seemed to open into the air shaft, and so let in very little light. The inside was so dark that the oil lamp on the table was already lit, and the table was covered in piles and piles of artificial flowers. Two little boys and a girl sat at the table, their tiny fingers swiftly twisting paper and wire.

Katherine felt sick. She and Denton had _just_ finished the story about children who made flowers at home, how exploited they were and how little they got paid. The siblings of a boy she considered her friend were some of those children, and she hadn’t known.

“That’s Isaac, Meredith, and Owen,” Mrs. Goodwin said, pointing to each child in turn.

“Hello,” Katherine said, and the children nodded shyly at her. “Mrs. Goodwin, what is Skittery’s given name? I’ve never asked,” she said, trying another smile. This time, Skittery’s mother smiled a little in return, the corners of her mouth just turning up.

“Daniel,” she said. “He’s a good boy. Better than ten of his worthless father. And Smalls is Nicholas.”

“I’m sure Skittery’s good character has to do with the mother who raised him,” Katherine said gently. “And Smalls’, too. Your husband is gone?”

“He is,” Mrs. Goodwin said contemptuously. “Good riddance to him, except that we can scarcely feed ourselves without him.”

She gestured to the two remaining chairs in the room, and Katherine took one, while Mrs. Goodwin took the other. Kath noticed that Denton stayed back, leaning against the wall by the door.

“Bryn’s not dead, you understand,” Mrs. Goodwin started to explain. “At least, not that I’m aware of. But he left just after Owen was born, and he hasn’t shown his face since. Daniel and Nicholas immediately went to work to help - I was grateful they’d both gotten through so much schooling. The little ones aren’t so lucky. But selling papers doesn’t make much, and making flowers even less, and of course I can’t leave the children to go to work myself. There’s no one else to look after them.” She gestured to a huge pile of odd-shaped cloth pieces at the other end of the room. “I baste coats while they do flowers, and between the two things we can just about make rent. With what Daniel brings in, we manage to stay fed most of the time. Things were a little better before they took Nicholas to The Refuge,” Mrs. Goodwin finished. She pressed her lips together to keep them from trembling, and Katherine tactfully chose to ask the easier question first.

“Why doesn’t Skittery - Daniel - stay here with you?” she asked kindly. “Wouldn’t it be better for all of you if he didn’t stay at the lodging house?”

Mrs. Goodwin’s eyes grew hard. “Not better for him,” she said vehemently. “This won’t make much sense to you, Miss Katherine, but I’d much rather have him there than here. If he’d stayed here, he’d have gotten caught up in one of these horrible gangs, robbing people, drinking. They steal whatever they can to stay alive, and it makes them cruel. It would have destroyed my boy. He’s got a good heart, and I wasn’t going to watch him turn into a criminal. When he took up with the newsboys, I told him to earn as much as he could, make friends, and stay safe with them. I did the same with Nicholas. The newsboys live rough, as we do, but they’re workers, not criminals. They - The boys will still probably have to come back here and work on the docks, and that’s a hard life, too. They can’t sell papers forever, but at least they have friends, and they’ll have known a little bit of freedom, and a little bit of life away from this place. It’s worth the money they spend on lodging every week, to give them that.”

"I can actually very easily see why that would be so important to you,” Katherine said softly. “Give them people to turn to, give them hope. Help them feel like they aren’t alone.”

Mrs. Goodwin nodded. “Yes,” she replied, her voice tight. “Feeling as though everything rests on your own shoulders, with no one to help, can be the most awful burden.”

“Mrs. Goodwin, I feel like there isn’t any way to easily ask this,” Katherine said apologetically. “I can guess, but it’s better if I hear it from you. What is keeping you from bringing Smalls - Nicholas - home from The Refuge?”

“What isn’t?” Mrs. Goodwin said bitterly. “The Refuge is clear up on Randall’s Island, to begin with. I’d have to walk down to 26th Street, then take the ferry to Randall’s Island. Even assuming I had the ferry fare both ways, which I don’t, I’d have no one to stay with the children, and I’d lose a day’s worth of sewing wages besides. I can’t afford that. Some months we barely make rent as it is.”

“And then,” she went on, “suppose I get there, and the warden won’t let me have Nicholas? I don’t know what’s required. I can’t promise to feed him; he feeds himself most of the time - or he did, before he was shut up in that awful place. What if they say I’m not a good mother? What if they take the other three? I can’t - I can’t bear to think that my other babies might be taken there,” she whispered, and tears escaped from the corners of her eyes. She pulled a handkerchief from her pocket and dabbed them away.

“This place isn’t fit for a dog to live in, Miss Katherine, but all I want is to keep my children,” Mrs. Goodwin said, her voice breaking. “I love my babies. I’m doing all I can just to keep us together and keep a roof over our heads.”

“Of course you want to keep your children with you,” Katherine sympathized, reaching out and squeezing the older woman’s hand. “What mother wouldn’t?”

She knew that what Mrs. Goodwin said was potentially true, though she wouldn’t know for sure until she talked to the warden. If Skittery’s mother had to prove her “fitness” as a parent in order to get Smalls released, it could be hopeless. The fact that her husband was gone and the location of her current residence would disqualify her from the start. And there was a risk, however small, that someone would think to investigate whether Mrs. Goodwin had other children.

“I am going to see Warden Collins tomorrow,” Katherine reassured her. “Skittery gave me a letter for Smalls. I will see what I can find out about what it would take to have Nicholas released. If there is a way, Mrs. Goodwin, we will find it. I will come and stay with Isaac, Meredith, and Owen myself, if I have to.”

Mrs. Goodwin’s eyes widened. “I couldn’t ask you to do that. You could lose your job at the paper, Miss Katherine! And you need to keep doing what you do. Daniel’s told me how much you did to help during their strike - both of you. You give people like me a voice.”

“We try,” Katherine said, trying to steady the sudden waver in her voice. “And I don’t think I’d lose my job, Mrs. Goodwin; we could say I was doing it for the story - and I will be writing it up, so it’s not really an untruth. But we’ll see what we can do. Maybe we can find some other way to make everything happen, depending on what the warden says. Have you reached out to any of the settlement houses? The Neighborhood Guild, or College Settlement? I don’t know if there’s one here in Hell’s Kitchen, but -”

“There isn’t one, to my knowledge,” Mrs. Goodwin said, shaking her head. “Of course, it’s not as if I’ve had the time to find one, so it could be there’s one I don’t know about. And it’s the same problems all over again, Miss Katherine, don’t you see? I can’t make rent if I don’t sew and the children don’t make flowers. And every hour we don’t do that means we’re closer to being on the street.”

With a sudden burst of internal horror, Katherine realized that even by talking with her, Mrs. Goodwin was losing precious minutes of sewing, the coats she might have basted in an hour or two going undone because of their interview. That in itself spoke volumes about how desperate she was to get Smalls back.

Katherine rose with decision, her mind already formulating possible plans, not only to get Smalls home, but also to get some real help for Mrs. Goodwin and her other children.

“I’m not going to keep you any longer,” she said respectfully, smiling. “I have more than enough to start with. I’ll let you know what the Warden says, or have Skittery let you know, and we’ll go from there. But, Mrs. Goodwin,” she said seriously, clasping the woman’s hands in her own, “I am going to do everything I possibly can to bring Smalls back. I promise.”

Mrs. Goodwin nodded. “I believe you,” she said, squeezing Katherine’s hands in return and conveying a wealth of gratitude with the small gesture. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Katherine said. “You’ll hear from me soon.”

She made her way to the door, and Denton smiled at Mrs. Goodwin and touched his hat again before they left, once more navigating the dark, reeking hallway and staircase before finding their way out into the crisp air that warned of winter coming. Katherine watched her feet and maneuvered her skirts in silence, not saying a word until she and Denton were back on the streetcar toward Park Row.

“Skittery .  . . thought I would see them differently,” she said finally, her voice low, and Denton leaned in to hear her over the street noise. “He thought . . . that I would think less of his family for their poverty, think less of his mother because she is alone, think less of him for not going home every night. Think less of his siblings because they aren’t in school. Think less of them all for where they live, as if they can help that. What did I do to make him think that, Denton? What did I do to make him think that I would think less of them, when they are doing _everything humanly possible_ to keep _living,_ if you can even call it that?” Her voice broke, but she was too angry to cry, too appalled by what she had seen, too irrationally hurt by her friend’s lack of faith.

Denton put a hand on her arm in sympathy, and she could see him weighing his words before he spoke. “Katherine, you have to remember how much of a novelty you are for those boys. They expect wealthy people to treat them as your father did, and most of the time they are right to expect that. They know that people like your father see them as uneducated, as lacking ambition, as unintelligent. They know that people with money see them as immoral and susceptible to all kinds of vices. So often, their problems are really linked to their environment and lack of opportunity, but many middle- and upper-class people don’t see that. Skittery knows you have a good heart. He knows how much you did during the strike. He’s maybe just waiting for the other shoe to drop, for you to turn your back when you see the worst parts of his life. And I’m sure it’s not because of anything about _you_ , but because that’s what many people of your class would do.”

Katherine sighed, running a hand over her face. “And there are only so many Ms. Walds, Ms. Ovingtons, and Mr. Coits in the world. I see.”

“There are more of them all the time,” Denton assured her. “And you are one of their number, Katherine. You can’t expect everyone to trust you with everything all at once, and it was a huge step for Skittery and his mother to trust you with this.”

“I know,” Katherine admitted. “I shouldn’t feel hurt about this, and I won’t. I’m so glad Skittery trusted me this far, and I’m going to prove to him that he was right to. I’m so - I can’t believe that someone I consider a _friend_ lives like this, Denton. I can’t believe that his mother works so hard for almost nothing, and no one seems to care that she’s barely holding her family together.”

“ _You_ care,” Denton said quietly. “And I care, too. We’re going to help them, Kath. Go see Collins at The Refuge tomorrow, and then take everything you’re feeling and everything you’ve learned and put it into your story. That’s what you do best.”

Katherine managed a wan smile. “Thank you. I needed to hear that.”

“I know,” Denton nodded. “This is why we do what we do, Kath. When you write about the worst abuses people can suffer, when you write about the exploitation and the poverty that is happening under our very noses, when you drag these things that live in the dark out into the light, and make the rest of the world confront their existence - that’s when change happens. You’ve seen it already. Being a journalist is fighting for that change every day.”

Katherine nodded, her mouth tightening into a firm line. “Then we fight.”

* * *

 

When she and Denton got back to the office, Katherine immediately set to work, feverishly writing up her notes from her interview with Skittery’s mother. She tried to capture both Mrs. Goodwin’s love for her children and the poverty and obstacles that fettered the family to an almost impossible degree, the grim despair of a mother who still tried to give her children some light and freedom. Anger at the conditions, the unfairness, the social judgement, fueled Katherine’s descriptions and kept her going. Anger was easier than sadness.

When Jack’s note arrived on her desk with the late post, the tears that Katherine had been keeping back all afternoon finally came. She recognized Jack’s neat writing instantly, and tore open the letter with shaking hands, pressing a hand to her mouth as she read and her eyes filled with tears.

 _David’s all right_ , she reminded herself firmly. _He’s all right. Jack wouldn’t lie to you. He loves David, too_.

Still, nothing was going to keep her away from the Jacobs’ tonight. She had plenty of notes, and her interview with Collins was already set up. She dried her eyes and tidied her desk, putting her notes carefully in a drawer, then made a quick stop at Denton’s’ office to tell him what had happened.

She left the newsroom at a brisk clip, the closest thing she could manage to a run while still maintaining her dignity.

  


**Historical Notes**

1\. Getting locked out of a factory when one was late, losing a day’s  pay, or even being fired for tardiness, were all common practices in the garment factories. Replacement labor was easy to find, and most factory bosses didn’t care about losing a worker. On the flip side, being _locked in_ to a factory for a day of work was also not uncommon - it is one of the practices that leads to the tragedy of the Triangle Factory Fire in 1911, along with a lack of fire escapes and secondary exits. Workers were not allowed to leave even for their meal breaks; they had to stay inside the factory and eat.

2\. Tracing the history of Hell’s Kitchen is difficult; even the name has several different origin stories.  The first reference to a Hell’s Kitchen tenement was in a _New York Times_ story in 1881, but from the way the name is used in the article, it is evident that to New Yorkers at least, the name was already known and in use. It seems there also was a tenement _building_ known as Hell’s Kitchen, right around where I have Skittery’s family living, before the name spread out to mean the neighborhood. One of the more plausible explanations is that because of the clusters of slaughterhouses, fat-rendering plants, and soap factories, the foul smells and the butchering of meat and melting of fat gave the neighborhood its nickname (not to mention the heat from both fat-rendering and soap-making!). Their locations on 38th, 39th, and Abattoir Place are all historically accurate. The neighborhood was also notorious for male gangs; the last famous gang of Hell’s Kitchen, an Irish group called the Westies, was not disbanded until the late 1980s. In 1900, the criminal activity by gangs was increasing, and included groups such as the Gophers, the Hell’s Kitchen Gang, the Gorillas, and the Parlor Mob. Businesses generally paid a specific gang for protection, and were thereby left alone. Hell’s Kitchen was also close to the Hudson River Docks, and therefore populated and frequented by many dock workers. Finally, Hell’s Kitchen was known to be one of the poorest neighborhoods in the city, with many of the worst tenements. Good web articles on this history can be found [ here ](https://researchnychistory.wordpress.com/2015/04/09/whats-in-a-name-in-hells-kitchen-a-mystery/) , [ here ](http://manhattanunlocked.blogspot.com/2010/11/why-hells-kitchen-follow.html) , and [ here ](https://untappedcities.com/2012/10/12/gang-history-in-hells-kitchen/) ; there is a great podcast about the history of Hell’s Kitchen [ here ](http://www.boweryboyshistory.com/2015/07/hells-kitchen-new-yorks-wild-west.html). The Bowery Boys’ podcasts in general are a great resource for NYC history.

3\. There was in fact a 9th Avenue trolley; I found a wonderful [ old map online ](https://www.nypl.org/blog/2015/04/03/nyc-transit-maps-1845-1921) (Map #3) that details most of the trolley routes in the city at this time. While the map is a little hard to read when you zoom in, the 9th Ave. line did go up to 39th as far as I could tell.

4\. The Refuge was moved to Randall’s Island in 1854. (Its neighbor, Blackwell’s Island (now Roosevelt Island), was the site of the famous insane asylum that Nellie Bly got herself committed to for her _World_ exposé.) None of the three bridges that allow railroads, cars, and pedestrians to get to Randall’s Island today existed in 1900. On the map referenced above, there is a ferry line that apparently ran from 26th Street and made stops at Randall’s and Ward’s Islands.

5\. Mrs. Goodwin and Kath’s worries about the other children are not unfounded. People who worked in what we now think of as social services sometimes did take children away from their parents, in the “best interest” of the child, which is how so many children ended up at places like The Refuge. Just as often, however, they would not take children without the parents’ consent, which was sometimes given - see my notes in previous chapters about The Refuge and the Hebrew Orphan Asylum. Social service organizations were mostly private and so mixed, at this time, that what was true for one place and organization was not necessarily true for another.

6\. Ms. Wald, Ms. Ovington, Mr. Coit - All three of these people were founders of settlement houses in NYC, places that were intended to provide social services and education in immigrant neighborhoods. They created kindergartens, had bathing facilities, had adult education classes for immigrants, formed clubs for working people, and conducted surveys on health, sanitation, education, and many other topics as part of their many endeavors to improve conditions for immigrants and the working poor. As Denton implies, most of the men and women who founded settlement houses and worked at them believed that crime and poverty were linked to environmental and social problems and economics, rather than genetic criminal tendencies or inherently bad morals.  Stanton Coit founded the Neighborhood Guild, later University Settlement, in 1886, as the first settlement house in the U. S. By 1900, the Guild was on its third location at 26 Delancey Street. It had at least 2,000 adults enrolled in classes and at least 500 children who used the facilities daily, along with perhaps hundreds of others who were only there once or twice a week. College Settlement was established in 1889 at 95 Rivington Street by women graduates of Vassar, Wellesley, Smith, and Bryn Mawr colleges. Lillian Wald established Henry Street Settlement in 1895, after living at College Settlement until she could purchase a building for her new settlement house. Mary White Ovington established the Greenpoint Settlement in Brooklyn in 1896. University Settlement and Henry Street Settlement both still exist and serve their neighborhoods. While the settlements often urged immigrants to Americanize and learn English, change their traditional dress and haircuts, forget their original language, and leave behind their heritage in ways that make us profoundly (and rightly) uncomfortable now, they also provided desperately needed education, medical and health services, and social clubs and recreation to neighborhoods and people that were in need of them.


	7. Sarah

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, lovely people. I hope this will be the first part of the emotional payoff in this fic, for all of you. I love this chapter very much, and I hope you do, too! 
> 
> As always, my thanks to Nagaem_C and WickedforGood13 for being the world's most amazing betas and friends. This story would never be what it is without them. <3
> 
> It may be a while before another update; the new university term looms, and this prof has far more to do than is healthy. But I will keep writing, never fear!
> 
> Come squee with me in the comments; it makes me so happy! :)

**Chapter Seven: Sarah**

 

Sarah reached the factory that morning panting; she hurried up the steps with the last of the women just as the foreman, Mr. Johnson, was coming out to lock the doors. He gave her a hard look.

“Tardiness is not tolerated here, Ms. Jacobs, as you well know,” he snapped. “I see you coming in this late again and you will be out of a job.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” Sarah was quick to answer. “It was a bit of a busy morning. I’ll be sure to be here earlier from now on.”

“See that you do,” Mr. Johnson said tersely, and locked the door behind her as she hurried up the stairs.

Inwardly, Sarah breathed a sigh of relief. She could have been fired on the spot, or Mr. Johnson could have said much worse. He was notorious for trying to coerce sexual favors out of the women workers, and often fired or docked the pay of those who refused him. A few of the male tailors occasionally ran interference, or tried to, but they could only do so much, and a handful of them were as bad as Johnson himself.

She hurriedly stowed her lunchpail and shawl in the cloakroom, and slid into the seat in front of her machine just as Mr. Johnson called for them to start.

“Where were you?” her neighbor, Elsa Goldman, exclaimed in an undertone as they set the wheels of their sewing machines to whirring. “I was so worried! I thought for sure Johnson was going to fire you.”

“Just running a little late,” Sarah reassured her. “There was a lot happening at home this morning, and I got a late start.”

“I’m surprised the old wolf didn’t take your wages for today and make you work anyway,” Elsa said tartly. “He knows you won’t play his games.”

Sarah shushed her, trying to stifle her laughter at Elsa’s sharp tongue. She was thankful the noise of the machines covered almost any conversation they managed.

Elsa lived a few blocks from the Jacobs’ tenement building, and she had been Sarah’s friend since she had come to work at the factory four years ago, when Sarah had already been there two years. She was taller than Sarah, with blue eyes and curly light brown hair that fell in ringlets and came loose from its pins as she worked over the course of the day. She was known in their shop for her cutting wit and vicious frankness, but these were paired with a big heart and a cheerful disposition.

Sustained conversation was basically impossible while their machines were running, and Sarah bent to her work. The morning went swiftly, focused as she was on being stitch-perfect; it would never do to have Mr. Johnson find fault with her sewing today.

At the noon call for lunch, she breathed a sigh of relief; she was starving, and she needed to stretch. As the machines around her slowed, she finished the seam she was working on and sat up, wincing as the tension in her muscles eased. She stood carefully, surreptitiously shaking her legs to try and ease their fatigue from working the treadle.

She and Elsa made their way to the cloakroom with the other women, and quickly pulled out their pails. Half an hour was none too much time to eat, but they always tried to have a little conversation with each other as well; sometimes sharing news and reading during their short break was the only thing that made the day bearable.

“Elsa, what’s happening with the union?” Sarah asked. “I’ve heard almost nothing since June. We heard it was being formed, and there have been a couple of articles in the _Forward_ about locals being organized, but nothing else.”

“There’s a fight coming with the union,” Elsa said bluntly, as she began to nibble at her bread and sausage. “Father says they don’t want the women to join.” Elsa’s father was one of the most skilled tailors at their shop, and represented them in the New York Local No. 1.

Sarah’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean, they don’t want us to join? They made it sound like that was a foregone conclusion, at the beginning. They asked us about forming the union. We took a risk, signing those petitions to show our support. We’re half the workers in the garment industry!”

Elsa’s lips pursed in irritation. “They think we’re unskilled and we can’t be organized. They want the male, skilled workers in the union. They want the women workers to support the men, of course, but they don’t want to give us our own representation.”

“But that’s ridiculous!” Sarah exclaimed. “It takes just as much skill to run a machine as it does to do the fine tailoring. And there are just as many of us as there are of them, maybe more. Isn’t there something to be said for strength in numbers?”

Ingrid Abrams, another one of the girls in their row, overheard. “Not if the numbers are female,” she said sarcastically. “We don’t count. After all, they pay us half of what the men make, sometimes less; it takes at least two of us to make one of them.”

“That’s absurd,” Sarah said heatedly. “There’s no reason on earth they should try to keep us out, not when we’ve shown our support from the start.”

Ingrid scoffed. “They don’t need a _reason_. They’re men. That’s reason enough.”

“Well, then let’s show them they’re wrong,” Sarah argued. “Let’s organize anyway. Form our own local.”

Elsa shook her head. “They won’t recognize it.”

“We’ll _make_ them,” Sarah retorted. “If we get enough women together in a chapter, they won’t care that we’re women; they’ll care what we do. And if they’re still determined to keep us out, we’ll make our own union. But I think we can change their minds. They know we’ve been behind this idea; if we show them that we want our own local, that we’re willing to support them with dues and attend meetings, participate in whatever actions they decide on, they won’t turn us away.”

Elsa considered her. “That’s optimistic,” she said, a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. “But I suppose pessimism never got anyone anywhere.”

“Let’s call it hoping for the best and preparing for the worst,” Sarah said, smiling back. “I meant it about forming our own union; we can do it if we have to. But it would be so much more helpful to have all of us in one union, women and men. Our numbers would be greater, we’d be more visible, we’d have more money. It’s silly for them to take all the men, in whatever ladies’ garment job they do, and exclude the women just because they assume we won’t want to be involved.”

“I agree,” Elsa said, nodding. “All right, then. Let’s talk about this more tomorrow; we all need to eat. Can the two of you get here early tomorrow and talk to some of the other girls? I can.”

“I can, too,” Sarah agreed. “And I know most of us here were for forming the ILGWU; I don’t think it will be hard to convince most of the others that we need a local.”

Ingrid nodded as well. “I’d be happier if we just formed our own union and were done with it, but I see your point,” she said to Sarah. “I’ll come tomorrow.”

“Good,” Elsa said, clapping her hands. “We’ll see what kind of support there is, and go from there.”

Sarah kept her thoughts busy throughout the afternoon, coming up with arguments that might convince any hesitant co-workers to join a local chapter. The prejudice of the male ILGWU organizers infuriated her; they had no right to ignore the women workers, and no reason for it except their own myopic vision.

 _Well_ ,  she thought determinedly, _we’ll just have to be loud enough that they can’t ignore us_.

* * *

 

As Sarah reached her home block that evening, she spotted Katherine coming from the other direction, and something about the other woman’s walk and posture concerned her. Katherine was normally decisive and purposeful, but she was rushing in a way that was almost alarming, nearly tripping over her skirt in her haste.

Sarah picked up her own skirt and hurried over to her friend in response. Katherine looked up as she approached and then flew into her arms, clinging to her silently.

“Sweetheart, what’s happened?” Sarah asked, holding her in return. “I thought you might go back to your father’s tonight. What’s wrong?”

“Oh, Sarah, it’s been such a day,” Katherine sighed tiredly. “I’ll tell you everything, but I’m here because David got hurt at the yards today. Jack sent me a note at the office.”

Sarah tensed. “But Davey’s all right?” she asked, keeping her voice controlled.

Katherine nodded against her neck. “He is, or he will be,” she answered, and Sarah’s shoulders relaxed in relief. “Jack said the doctor at the yards took good care of him. I just - I went to see Skittery’s mother today, and it was so _awful_. And now, to have David be hurt . . . .”

“Come on,” Sarah said sympathetically. “Let’s go up together, and we’ll check on Davey, and have some dinner, and you can tell us all about Skittery. It will do you good to see Davey with your own eyes and eat something.”

“Thank you,” Katherine said gratefully, squeezing Sarah and then standing upright again. She brushed at her skirt in distress. “My skirt is filthy; I had meant to change clothes at my father’s. I feel like I shouldn’t sit at your parents’ dinner table in this.”

Sarah smiled. “That’s easy to fix; you can borrow something of mine. I’m only a little bit shorter than you, and your shirtwaist is still clean. No one will notice a thing.”

Katherine made a small noise of relief, and clasped Sarah’s hand in her own. “Bless you. What on earth would I do without you?”

“You won’t ever have to find out,” Sarah promised her warmly, and the two girls made their way up the stairs to the Jacobs’ apartment.

As they entered, Esther came hurrying to meet them. “Thank goodness you are here,” she said. “I’ve been so worried.” She drew Katherine into a hug, kissing her cheek. “David is fine. It will take him a few days to be up and about, I think, but no real harm done.”

“I’m grateful it wasn’t any worse,” Katherine said, hugging Esther in return. “Are _you_ all right?”

“Yes,” Esther nodded, giving her a shaky smile. “I am; it’s silly to worry this way. I am so glad you’re both home. I feel better now that all of my children are here.”

Sarah kissed her mother’s cheek in her turn, warmth filling her at how readily her mother called Jack and Katherine her children. “We love you, Mama.”

“Mr. Richardson was so understanding; it’s the complete opposite of what happened with your father,” Esther continued, some of the tension in her face relaxing as she hugged Sarah. “But you should talk to Jack, sweetheart; he’s barely left your brother’s side, and he’s taking all of this terribly hard. He blames himself, and he really shouldn’t.”

Sarah nodded, her throat tightening. Of course Jack would think he had failed to protect Davey, even if there was nothing he could have done to prevent what happened.

The three of them moved into the living room together, and Esther gestured to Jack, curled up and asleep on the loveseat, his head pillowed on the arm.

“I didn’t want to wake him,” Esther whispered. “He woke Davey to check on him, the last time, and then fell asleep almost as quickly as your brother. He’s exhausted himself worrying, today. Go talk to him. I can finish supper; there isn’t much left to do.”   

“I can help,” Katherine offered eagerly. “Please, Esther. I’d be glad to.”

“Thank you, Katherine,” Esther said. “Come with me, then. We’ll put together some food for Davey while we’re at it, and see if he wants to eat before the rest of us.”

Sarah kissed her mother again, and sent a smile to Katherine. “Don’t forget that you want to change your skirt before supper.”

“No, I won’t,” Katherine assured her. “And this way I don’t have to worry about spilling anything on this one,” she said with a laugh.

Sarah paused to greet and hug Les, who was setting the table, before kneeling in front of Jack. As she had that morning (was it only fourteen hours ago?), she stroked his hair softly.

“Jack. Wake up, _neshomeleh_ ,” she said gently. “It’s almost time for supper.”

Jack’s eyes opened slowly, and then suddenly he jerked, looking toward Dave and starting to sit up.

“It’s all right, he’s fine,” Sarah said soothingly. “Davey’s fine. You haven’t been sleeping for very long.”

Jack sighed, then ran his hands over his face and through his hair. “Good. That’s good,” he said. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep.”

Sarah sat next to him, kissing him softly in greeting and taking his hand in hers. “Mama said you needed it. It sounds like you and Davey both had quite the day.”

Jack gave a short, humorless chuckle. “That’s one way of puttin’ it.”

“Tell us all about it while we eat,” Sarah said, squeezing his hand. “That way you’ll only have to tell it once.”

“That . . . would be good,” Jack admitted. He looked down at their hands, putting his free hand overtop of their hands that were already joined. “Sarah, I’m sorry. I promised you I would watch out for Davey, and I didn’t keep him safe.”

“No,” Sarah said, shaking her head. “You have nothing to be sorry for, love. These things happen, and you cannot prevent every bad thing from happening to any of us - much as you might want to,” she said with a small smile. “I am just thankful that you and the doctor got Davey treated so quickly, and that you got him home - and that you aren’t hurt,” she added finally, kissing him again.

Katherine came over then, carrying a bowl of broth and some bread, and she rested a hand on Jack’s shoulder. “Go sit, Jack,” she said kindly. “I’ll wake David and make sure he eats something. Have a moment with Sarah. You’ve been keeping watch all day; let the rest of us help you for a little while.”

Jack gave her a grateful smile. “Thanks, Kath,” he said. “I appreciate it.” The smile turned to a slight frown, though, as he took in her face. “You look tired,” he observed. “What else happened today?”

Katherine laughed a little, shaking her head. “ _Stop_ , little brother,” she said affectionately. “You can’t take care of everyone all the time. Let me take care of David, let Sarah take care of you, and when I get back to the table I’ll tell you what happened today.”

“She’s right, you know,” Sarah chimed in. She loved watching Katherine and Jack interact; they had a relationship that was full of teasing, trust, and a great deal of fondness, and they understood each other in ways that reminded her very much of her relationship with Davey.

“All right, all right,” Jack said, giving in. “I’m going.” He rose to his feet and began to move toward the table. Sarah smiled at Katherine for her help, and Katherine gave her a wink before moving to David’s side.

* * *

 

Supper was long; there was a great deal to talk about and everyone had to take a turn. Davey was awake and listening in from the bed after Katherine had coaxed some bread and broth into him, and it was a tremendous relief to Sarah to see her brother alert.

Jack told the story of what had happened at the yards first, with the occasional interjection from David, and when he finished, the silence around the table was contemplative.

“Your Mr. Richardson is right,” Meyer said. “If this is about the railroad unions, it could get ugly.”

Katherine looked from Meyer to Jack to David. “I’m not sure I understand why there’s danger in it being the _railroad_ unions they’re after,” she said hesitantly. “Why the railroads, specifically?”

David spoke up. “They’ve been around the longest,” he said frankly. “They’ve been one of the most successfully organized industries. If the railroad unions get broken, if they fracture or their ability to negotiate is destroyed, that sends a message to every other group of workers trying to organize right now. Including the dock workers, the slaughterhouse workers, and the ILGWU,” he finished, with a nod to his sister.

“It’s rather fiendishly clever, actually,” Sarah agreed. “If whoever’s behind this can break the railroads unions, then every other employer in the country is going to think they can break _any_ attempt to unionize. It’s hugely symbolic. It would make organizing much harder for the rest of us. There’s so much fear already. Most of the women in my factory - a lot of the garment workers generally - are angry enough that they’re willing to take the risk, but that won’t be true of every group of workers.”

“It’s too clever for Oscar and Morris,” Jack said, drumming his fingers on the table as he thought. “There’s no way they’re doin’ this on their own. Someone’s payin’ them, and whoever it is has a lot of money, and a lot of power.”

“Which is the other reason it could get ugly,” Meyer added. “Someone who tries to destroy established groups like the railroad unions has to have a lot of resources, and if they’re willing to expend them, that usually means they’re also willing to be ruthless.They won’t care how it’s accomplished, as long as it is.”

“So what do we do?” Les asked.

“We get the newsies to keep an eye out for the Delancys, first of all,” Jack said. “Follow the rats. If we can figure out who they’re takin’ orders from, that’s a start. I’ll go talk to Race and Spot tomorrow after work.”

“Oscar and Morris won’t go straight to the source,” David interjected. “Whoever’s doing this won’t want to get their hands dirty, or have any direct links. They’ll delegate.”

Jack nodded. “So we follow the chain,” he said. “Find out who the Delancys are talkin’ to, then follow that person to the next man up the ladder.”

“Just tell the newsies to watch their backs,” David said sharply. “Follow and report, and that’s all. We don’t want anybody else to get hurt.”

“No, we don’t,” Jack concurred, and he and David shared a look that made Sarah’s stomach clench. They both knew how dangerous this could get, and they were going to be smart about it - but they weren’t going to walk away. That wasn’t who they were. She would never ask them to be any other way - and neither would Kath, she knew - but it didn’t keep her from worrying about them.

Katherine took up her own story next, detailing what had happened when she and Denton went to Hell’s Kitchen, and this time it was Esther who spoke first.

“Poor Mrs. Goodwin,” she said sympathetically. “Surely there has to be some way to help her?”

“Several ways, I think,” Katherine said. “I’m going to talk to Warden Collins tomorrow, first of all. Depending on what kind of man he is, getting Smalls back could be easy or incredibly difficult. And then, I want to know if there’s a settlement house in Hell’s Kitchen. If there is, the people there will be able to help. I’m not above using my father’s name to get them to listen to me.”

“It’s called Hartley House,” Jack said quietly. “It’s on West 46th. Miss Greene is the name of the woman who runs it.”

Katherine turned to stare at him. “It’s - how do you _know_ that?” she asked in surprise.

Jack’s shoulders tensed, almost imperceptibly, and Sarah reached over, under the table, to take his hand.

“It used to be my job to know, Kath,” he said, his voice and expression suddenly cool. “If one of the newsies came to me askin’ where they could get a bath, because there wasn’t any clean water at home, or if there was a way to get a doctor because someone was coughin’, or even where they might be able to get some extra help with readin’, that’s where I’d send them, especially if it was one of the ones who went home at night and didn’t stay in the lodging house. We took care of our own as best we could, but there was only so much we could do. I’d ask them what the nearest cross streets were to where they lived, and when they told me, I’d send them to whatever settlement house was closest.”  

Katherine flushed under Jack’s sharp gaze. “I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I didn’t know.”

“Neither did I,” David chimed in, and somewhere in his tone was a rebuke to Jack for being so harsh with Katherine, layered with surprise at the new piece of information about running Manhattan. Sarah squeezed Jack’s hand gently.

 _Easy, love_ , she thought silently. _Ignorance is not malice_.

Jack sighed, the tension on his face dissolving, and he returned Sarah’s squeeze. “I’m sorry,” he said, addressing both Katherine and David. “Of course you didn’t. There wasn’t any reason you should,” he said tiredly.

Katherine nodded slowly, absorbing the new knowledge about Jack. “But - you didn’t know about Skittery?” she asked hesitantly.

“I knew Smalls was his brother. I knew they had other siblings. I knew they helped their ma with what they made, because their pa was gone,” Jack said. “But not the rest. That’s one of the unspoken rules. If someone offers you information about themselves, that’s fine. That’s fair game. If they don’t, you don’t ask. We all had tough lives, and there were plenty of things it was easier not to talk about. I’m glad you’re tryin’ to help him. If anyone can do it, you can, Kath,” Jack said, offering her a smile, and Kath smiled back momentarily, before the expression faded and she bit her lip.

“It just - doesn’t feel like enough,” she said in frustration. “I might be able to get Smalls home - but how many more of the children in the Refuge are like him? How many of them might be able to go home if their parents just had - trolley fare, or someone to watch their other children, or a day’s wages so that they could make rent? Such small obstacles, in the grand scheme of things, but they become these _insurmountable_ barriers.”

“So make it bigger,” David suggested, and Katherine turned to him, her eyes bright and inquisitive.

“Explain,” she demanded.

“Put an appeal for funds in your story. Get someone to run it and distribute the donations based on need,” David elaborated.

“It can’t be me - that would look self-serving - but maybe Mr. Lord, or this Miss Greene, since she’s already known, or maybe even Ms. Wald. That’s it!” Katherine exclaimed. She jumped up and kissed David firmly on the mouth in her exuberance, perching on the bed and gripping his hands. “You are _brilliant_ , dearest. A fund for small amounts, that would allow parents to take the time or have the resources to retrieve their children. And maybe it could be used for other things, like cab or trolley fare when parents are looking for work, or extra money when parents are trying to feed their children. It could do so many things - but always, always to help families like the Goodwins.”

“See?” David said fondly, smiling, though his cheeks were pink after having Kath kiss him in front of the whole family. “Problem solved, _tei-yerinkeh_.”

“It’s your solution, darling - I almost feel guilty using it. It will feel like I’m taking credit for something that isn’t mine. But it’s _such_ a good idea,” Katherine said fervently.

David laughed. “Take it and run with it. I know you’ll make it happen, and the more we can do to help, the better.”

“It _is_ a good idea, and you should both be proud,” Esther broke in, and it was Katherine’s turn to blush as she realized that everyone had been watching her exchange with David. “Now that we’ve found another way to change the world, might I get my daughters to help me with the dishes?”

Everyone laughed at Esther’s gentle humor, and Sarah sprang up from her seat.

“I’ll be right back,” she murmured to Jack, kissing him and receiving a kiss and a smile from him in return. She caught Katherine’s arm as her friend came around the table, and they headed toward the kitchen.

“That is the _perfect_ example of why you and Davey are such a good team,” she said, giving Katherine a grin.

“I know,” Katherine answered, still bouncing with excitement. “Oh, Sarah, it’s one of the things I love about your brother. Sometimes we just - _read_ each other, like that, and it leads to something like this! It won’t just be Smalls! We can help other people - maybe even some of the families of the other newsies!”  

“I hope so,” Sarah said, continuing to smile at Katherine’s infectious happiness. “Just remember that you’ll have to be careful how you go about it. The newsies have their own kind of pride, too - just like Skittery.”

“They do,” Katherine said, sobering a little, though her eyes were still lit with determination. “Today is the first time I feel like I’m really starting to understand that.”

* * *

 

When Sarah re-emerged from the kitchen with her mother and Katherine, the living room was quieter. Her father was sitting on the loveseat, smoking his pipe and reading the paper, and Les was curled against him, half-asleep.

David had fallen back asleep as well, his energy drained from eating and being up during supper. Jack was sitting in the chair nearest to him, simply watching David breathe and making sure there were no signs of danger.

Sarah looked over at Katherine, who had taken everything in just as quickly, and the two women had a brief conversation with their eyes. Katherine followed Esther over to Meyer and Les, pulling a chair over to the loveseat, while Esther sat next to her husband and moved Les so that his head was resting on her shoulder instead.

Sarah stayed where she was for just a moment, watching Jack watching Davey, and remembering the day they won the strike - the first time Jack kissed her, the day she had known for certain that she was falling in love with him, and the first time she had seen what was between Jack and her brother.

_The five of them walked home from the square together, stopped periodically by their friends, by unfamiliar but exultant newsies from other boroughs, by other young workers who had stood with them. Les ran forward and then came back, reporting on the various things people were saying and which groups of workers he found in the crowd. Katherine and Davey chatted happily about the success of Denton’s story and their midnight printing run, while she and Jack were quieter, smiling at each other and brushing hands and elbows when they weren’t stopping to shake hands and talk with other workers. Everyone, of course, wanted to talk to Jack, the strike leader, and Sarah watched with pride as he spoke to every person who wanted to meet him and thank him, offering them thanks in turn for their help. Their progress as a group was slow but happy, and not one of them minded the delay, soaking in the celebration and the hope that permeated the air as thoroughly as the sunshine._

_When they finally reached the entrance of the Jacobs’ building, Sarah paused at the bottom of the steps, not wanting to lose the rare opportunity to talk with Jack alone. He stayed with her, seeming to have the same thought, though neither of them voiced it._

_“Dave, Kath, can you give us a minute?” Jack asked, and Katherine smiled at him in understanding._

_“Of course. We’ll go on up. Don’t be too long,” Katherine said, giving them a wink, and Sarah felt a blush heat her cheeks, even as she gave her friend a grateful smile._

_Something like wistfulness crossed her brother’s face and was gone in the next breath, and it settled on Sarah’s heart like the lightest veil, a barely perceptible shadow that was more felt than seen. She resolved to herself that she would find out what her brother had been thinking._ _  
_ _Davey ushered Les inside with Katherine on his heels, and Sarah turned to Jack._

_Jack took her hands in his, but hesitated, clearly searching for the right words. “Sarah, I’m sorry if - I shouldn’t have kissed you like that, back there, without -”_

_Warmth filled Sarah’s chest at his concern, and she smiled at him again, still giddy from their win and from the fact that he hadn’t left, after all, and so happy she hardly knew what to do with it. “Jack Kelly, don’t you_ dare _apologize for kissing me. Do you hear me complaining?”_

_His mouth quirked as he took in her smile. “Well, no, but -”_

_Sarah shook her head. “No buts.” Her face went solemn again for a moment as something occurred to her. “Did you mean it? Is this - is this really what you want?” She hoped, she hoped with everything in her that he understood what she was truly asking._ Am I who you want? Could you really learn to love me?

 _At that, his eyes went wide in shock, and he gripped her hands more tightly. “Of_ course _I meant it. Sarah, I’ve been wantin’ to kiss you since that morning with you on the roof. I just - didn’t plan to do it like_ that _,” he laughed, his cheeks going slightly pink._

 _Sarah’s heart began to sing, and her smile returned. “How did you plan to do it?” she asked softly, teasing him just a bit, but also doing her best to give him an invitation, because she_ very _much wanted to kiss him again, whether it was proper or not._

_Jack’s eyebrows went up, but his eyes turned serious, though the smile from his laughter was still hovering on his lips. “Well,” he said slowly, lifting a hand to cradle her cheek, “maybe more like this.”_

_He leaned in and this time, when their lips met, it wasn’t with the exuberant abandon of their kiss in the square, but with a gentleness and tenderness that made Sarah’s knees weak in an entirely different way. Jack was kissing her as though she were someone precious - someone cherished - and the vulnerability in it made her ache. She let go of his hand that still held hers and wound her arm around his neck, using her lips to try and respond to him without words._ You are cared for. You are wanted. It scares me a little, too. We’re in this together. _She hoped her lips and her touch would speak for her, as Jack’s were speaking for him. She had known him for so short a time, but she was falling hopelessly, wonderfully in love with him, and knowing that he cared for her, too, made her heart glow with happiness._

_When they broke apart, both breathless, Sarah kept him close, leaning their foreheads together. “Don’t ever apologize for kissing me, Jack Kelly,” she repeated quietly, looking him in the eyes. “It’s perfect, no matter how you do it.” She gave him one last, light kiss and another smile before taking his hand again. “Come on. I’m sure Mama has heard the news by now and has conjured up a way to make a celebratory dinner for all of us.” Jack gave her a brilliant smile of his own before they went inside._

_Dinner was a joyous affair, with much laughter and teasing as Jack and David recounted their confrontation with Pulitzer in his office._

_“So then, after he’s finished dressing Joe down about how he’s an idiot for giving up so much in profits, he says, ‘Some of us down there in the streets are obviously better at math than you are,’” Jack told them mirthfully, and David broke into laughter, shoving him in the shoulder._

_“I didn’t say that!” he protested, unable to contain his grin. “_ You _spoke next, pointing out that it was about power, not money, that he couldn’t give in to us because it meant that we had the power instead of him. I was trying to make a point, not insult him!”_

_Katherine was laughing as well, her eyes sparkling. “Either way, I would have loved to be a fly on the wall. His expression must have been priceless!”_

_“It really was,” David agreed, smirking. “How often can anyone reduce your father to speechlessness, even momentarily?”_

_“Almost never,” Katherine said with a shake of her head. “I still almost can’t believe that we got him to give in.”_

_David reached across the table and took her hand. “The best part was when he saw your name on the article with Denton’s. He was completely shocked. I wish you could have seen that.”_

_Katherine shook her head. “So do I, but it was better that I stayed out in the square with Sarah. That article was about the strike; your meeting with him was to settle it. I didn’t need to derail that by having a fight with him over our personal differences - assuming he would have let me even get a word in,” she ended bitterly._

_David squeezed Kath’s hand that was still in his, and Sarah tactfully directed attention away from them by standing  up and clapping her hands. “Who wants cake?” she asked cheerfully, and amid a chorus of assent, she pointed to her youngest brother. “Les, come with me and carry plates.”_

_As they went to the kitchen, Sarah heard her mother - bless her - pick up the conversation, but she caught a glimpse of Davey and Kath’s linked hands still resting on the table, and smiled to herself._

_Later, after dinner, when the table had been cleared and they were all talking in the living room, Davey pulled her aside, guiding her back into the kitchen where they would be less likely to be overheard._

_“Are you happy, sis?” he asked, startlingly serious after the carefree joy of the day. “With Jack?”_

_Sarah’s eyebrows went up in surprise, almost bewildered that he would ask. “Of course. Davey, I - care for him so much,” she confessed, her eyes shining. It was the most she could bring herself to say right now, even to her brother, to whom she told almost everything._

_David’s face relaxed, and he gave her a small smile. “Good,” he said, pulling her into a hug. “I’m so glad for you, sis. He’ll be good to you.”_

_Sarah smiled, hugging him back. “Thank you.”_

_“Just -” and David hesitated, as if he wasn’t sure whether he should say what he was thinking. “Don’t let him pretend that he’s fine, when he isn’t. He’s good at it.”_

_Sarah’s brow furrowed in puzzlement, but she nodded. “All right.”_

_David hugged her again. “He’s lucky to have you.” And he gave her another smile before releasing her and going back over to Katherine, who was having an animated conversation with Les._

_Sarah frowned slightly as she watched him go, following him as far as the kitchen doorway. There had been the look on his face outside and now - this. It made sense that he would want to know that she was happy, that she was sure - Davey was as protective as a brother could be, for all that she was two years older. It even made sense that he would give her and Jack his blessing, in a way. Davey and Jack had become fast friends so quickly, and there was probably no one who understood Jack better than Davey. Jack was a natural caretaker, but he was masterful at caring for others without letting anyone too close, controlling who saw which parts of him. She and David had, she hoped, somehow become exceptions, two people he was slowly letting all the way into his carefully guarded heart._

_Still, as she watched her brother and Katherine break into laughter at something Les had said, she couldn’t shake the feeling that Davey was - sad, somehow, about her relationship with Jack, in a way that she was at a loss to explain._

_Speaking of Jack - Sarah turned her head, looking for him, expecting to see him talking with one of her parents, but he had turned one of the dining chairs toward the living room, while her parents had taken the loveseat and were chatting quietly. Much like Sarah herself, he appeared to be simply watching the room - but he was really watching David and Katherine, and the look on his face, in his eyes, was almost identical to the one she had seen on her brother’s._

_And then, between one heartbeat and the next, the pieces fell together._

Sarah gave a small shake of her head as she thought of that moment of realization; then, pulling her mind firmly back to the present, she squared her shoulders in determination. It had been a long day and they were all exhausted, but it was time to talk about this. Jack’s turmoil, at least, she could lessen, and end the perpetual stasis he and Davey had put themselves in. She would still need to talk to her brother, but that could wait until he was feeling better.

She made her way across the living room to Jack, and although he looked up and smiled as she came near, she could see that he was still not entirely there, still too worried over David to be completely present with her. She knelt next to his chair, laying her hand over his where it rested on his knee.

“You know,” she said softly, her voice low enough that only he would hear, “it would make me so happy if I never had to see that look in your eyes again - the way you look at Davey when you think no one is watching. You should tell him how you feel.”

Jack’s hand jumped under hers as if it had been burned, and his face went white. He stared at her with something very close to terror in his eyes. It made Sarah’s heart break. Her Jack, who was afraid of so little, was looking at her as though she was about to destroy him - and how did he not know by now that she never would?

She clung more tightly to his hand and smiled at him. “Jack, my love, that isn’t a threat. Come here.” She tugged at the hand she held - she never could have gotten Jack to stand on her own - and he followed her numbly, letting her lead him to the window and out onto the fire escape, where the stars were breaking through the grey and wintery clouds. She shut the window firmly, knowing that her parents would let them have the little bit of privacy the fire escape offered.

Jack finally tried to speak, his voice coming out choked. “Sarah . . .” He couldn’t even look at her, and Sarah could see the way his limbs twitched, fighting years of instinct that were telling him to run, warring with his need to stay.

Sarah went over to him and lifted his head up with gentle hands, so that he could see her face, pressing her body close as she looked into his eyes. “Jack. I love you. I love _all_ of you, do you understand that? What I said in there - I’m trying to say that I _know_. I know that you love me. I know that you love David, too. I don’t want you to have to hide that from me.”

“I do love you,” Jack whispered, reaching out and putting his arms around her waist, pulling her close, burying his face in the crook of her neck. “So much. So much, Sarah. You know that I would never - “

“I know,” Sarah interrupted him, kissing him tenderly. “I know you wouldn’t, and that’s exactly why we’re having this conversation. I’m saying that I know, and that I love you. There is _nothing_ wrong with how you feel.”

Jack scoffed, but she could feel his exhaustion as he laid his head against her shoulder. He was tired, so tired of trying to hide this part of himself from both her and David. She gently combed her fingers through his hair as she waited for him to speak.

“You mean besides the fact that I’m in love with both Jacobs siblings?” he whispered eventually, his voice cracking. “That I love you both, want you both, more than I can even understand? God, Sarah, doesn’t that mean there’s something just _broken_ in me?”

Jack pulled away from her abruptly, and the chill that went through Sarah had nothing to do with the cold evening air. Jack paced the two steps he could manage on the tiny landing, back and forth, agitation in every line of his frame. He tugged on his hair in frustration, trying to put his thoughts into words.

“I’ve never understood this, Sarah,” he said helplessly. “You and David are - everything - to me, but I don’t -” He broke off, shaking his head. “Everyone understands a man lovin’ a woman - that’s how most people are. And it happens often enough with two fellas. Ain’t nothin’ wrong with it, no matter what most people think. But how can I love two people at the same time? Doesn’t that just make me a - a -”

Sarah took one swift step forward and put a hand over his mouth. “Don’t you dare,” she said fiercely. “Whatever you were going to say, whatever words were in your head, don’t you dare apply them to yourself ever again. I said it before, and I’ll keep saying it as many times as you need to hear it: there is nothing wrong with how you feel. You are not broken, _neshomeleh_ , not in the least.” She let her hand drop from his lips and then kissed him again, hoping she was communicating all of her love and acceptance. “We both love you, too. We both desire you, as well. Does that make Davey and I broken? Two siblings in love with the same man?”

Jack stared at her in disbelief. “David doesn’t - he just thinks of me as his best friend, Sarah, not like -”

“He does,” Sarah countered, kindly but firmly, wanting him to register the conviction in her voice. “He does, Jack. It’s really for him to say, but I promise you, he does. Why do you think I said you should tell him how you feel? I would rather have us all be happy, than spend the rest of my life married to you and know that I was keeping the two of you apart. I won’t do that, to you or to Davey. ” Her voice softened once more. “So if you are broken, my love, we are all broken together. But I don’t believe that. I refuse to believe that the love we each feel for you, and the love you feel for us, makes any of us broken or less human.”

Sarah could see the conflicting emotions playing over Jack’s face. He wanted to believe her, wanted to believe _in_ her and believe what she was telling him about David, but something was still holding him back. He took her face in his hands, this time, and stroked her cheekbones with his thumbs, and the love in his eyes made Sarah’s breath catch.

“What about what it does to _you_ , love?” Jack asked, his voice breaking a little over the words. “You say you don’t want to do this to David and me, but none of this is worth it, if it hurts you in some way that won’t heal. I think David would say the same. We can stay the way we are, if that’s what you want.”

“I _don’t_ want it,” Sarah said earnestly, putting one of her hands over one of his, where it rested against her face. “I didn’t come to this decision lightly, _gelibteh_ . I’ve known how you and Davey feel about each other for a long time, almost since the beginning, and I’ve thought and thought about how I feel. I love you, and I have never doubted that you love me. The only part of this that hurts me is knowing that you and Davey love each other, and you are both hiding it away and suffering for it because you feel you have to. You _don’t have to_. Do you know what it says to me, that you love both David and I so much?”

Jack shook his head, looking at her with the barest beginnings of hope in his eyes, and Sarah kept going, her voice trembling a little with the depth of her sincerity.

“It says to me that you have an enormous heart, Jack Kelly, when you can give so much love and devotion to both of us. It says to me that you deserve to have that love given back, in the fullest measure possible. It says to me that David deserves that, too - he deserves every part of your love that you can give, not just half of it. If we’re careful, no one will ever need to know but us.”

The worry and fear in Jack’s face had slowly receded as she talked, and by the end he was looking at her almost as though he didn’t recognize her, but with all of the love and adoration that was usually there, as well. With a sudden, sharp exhale, he pulled her into his arms, holding onto her as if he would never let go.

“I don’t deserve you, Sarah Jacobs,” he murmured into her neck, and her eyes misted over. “I don’t deserve you offerin’ me this. I don’t deserve either of you. What makes you so amazingly brave?”

“Well, I have a fiancé and a brother who have a track record of being pretty amazingly brave,” Sarah said cheekily, trying to create some levity as she blinked away her tears. “I learned from the best.”

Laughter rippled through Jack’s frame as he lifted his head, and there, finally, was the smile Sarah loved, the one she only saw when he was happiest, though his eyes were damp. “I think you outshine us both by half, love.”

She couldn’t help kissing Jack for that, and she smiled back at him. “I don’t really think of this as being brave, you know, _neshomeleh_ ,” Sarah said. “What kind of wife, what kind of sister, would I be, if I kept silent about this and left you and Davey to be less than all of yourselves? To carry that pain with you, perhaps for years? You might both be able to cope with staying as you are; you might both be content, even. But it would hurt you, create constraint between you, and life is so short, _gelibteh_. We all run risks, and you and Davey more than most. The two of you should embrace what you feel. We all deserve as much love as our lives can hold.”

Jack’s arms tightened around her, and he pressed his lips into the hair at her temple before he managed to speak. “Thank you,” he whispered, his voice thick, and Sarah turned her head and caught his lips with hers, a kiss of both affirmation and benediction.

“Love creates courage, if you haven’t noticed,” she said softly, their lips still only a breath away. “And you do deserve it, deserve us, Jack. I promise you, you do.”

Jack returned her kiss, then, and _oh_. It was the same way he kissed her when they won the strike, warm and full-mouthed and firm, and she felt it all the way down to her toes. She could feel his heart pounding beneath his shirt, beating against her own, feel the heat in the tight clasp of his arms around her and his body pressed against hers, feel the warmth and desire in her own body, and there was nowhere else in the world she wanted to be. She wound her fingers into his hair, kissing him back for all she was worth, and wondered if it was possible to simply dissolve into him.

“Jack,” she sighed, as he pulled away from her lips and trailed kisses over her cheek, down to her jawline, until he found a spot just above her collar, a small hollow underneath her ear, that made her whole body shudder. “ _Jack, dirast tsu meyn harts_. I love you so much.”

He came back to her lips, still kissing her fervently. “I love you, too,” he murmured back breathlessly between kisses. “Sarah. I love you, I love you.”

“I love you,” she said again, and then she was lost for an unknown number of minutes in the feel of him, the taste of him, his gentle hands on her face and her back and her waist, somehow arousing even through all the layers of fabric. Only when her hair was threatening to come undone entirely did she reluctantly pull away from him far enough to speak.

“We should - we should stop, love,” Sarah breathed. “My parents could come find us out here, or Davey. And while I am happy to share you, there are some visuals that I think neither he nor I need to have in our heads,” she said wryly, and Jack laughed, placing a final kiss on her lips. While she hastily repinned her hair, he straightened his own clothes where her hands had wrinkled them. Once they were both fairly presentable again, he rearranged himself to sit behind her, wrapping his arms around her front.  

“There. Warm?” he inquired, and she nodded and hummed in contentment, leaning back against him. They were happily silent for a few minutes, basking in the physical closeness, before Jack spoke.

“I s’pose there will have to be some rules to this,” he said reflectively. “Boundaries, maybe?”

“I’m sure there will,” Sarah agreed. “We’ll figure out what they are - we all will. But right now I simply want us all to be on the same page, to know what we all want and what we all feel -  you and Davey included.”

Jack shook his head. “I can’t believe he never . . . well, no, yes I can. It’s a dangerous thing, and neither of us wanted to be wrong, or hurt you or Kath. Speaking of which . . . does Kath know?”

Trust Jack not to miss that. Sarah nodded, turning her head toward him. “She does. I talked to her first. If we were really going to do this, Jack, I couldn’t have her not know, and I needed someone to tell me I wasn’t crazy for even thinking about it. Also, she _is_ Davey’s fianceé, and she was the likeliest person to get him to talk about this. You know they love each other dearly, and David isn’t going to talk to _you_ until he’s sure.”

“If he ever does,” Jack murmured, and Sarah squeezed his forearm.

“He will,” she promised. “Just give him some time. You know how Davey is; he needs to work through things in his own head first, before he can talk about them, and Katherine helps him feel safe. They talked this morning, before we all left, and I think they came to an understanding. It’s going to be fine. We all just need to be patient, and listen to each other.”

Sarah felt Jack frown, more in the shift of his muscles than anything else. “He doesn’t feel safe with me?”

Sarah thought for a moment, and when she spoke, the words came slowly, as she tried to articulate her observations about her brother and Jack. “I don’t think it’s that he doesn’t feel safe, love. It’s more that he doesn’t _need_ to be safe, when he is with you. When the two of you met, he was trying to fill so many roles, with Papa hurt and unable to work. And even before that, he always tried to do the ‘sensible’ thing, do what was needed for all of us. But - it was always like he was wearing a suit that didn’t quite fit. You showed him that what is safe and sensible is not always the same as what is right and just. When he is with you, he can be the bravest version of himself. You allow him to be that person.”

Jack took that in, brushing his fingers lightly over Sarah’s arm as he thought. “And he and Kath . . .” Jack trailed off, perplexed. “I know they love each other, and they’re a team if I ever saw one, but I don’t quite understand how they work.”

“You should ask Katherine about it sometime,” Sarah suggested. “She would tell you, probably better than I can. It’s just . . . different, for her and David. They bring out different parts of each other, need each other in different ways.”

Jack nodded. “David would never try and control her the way old Joe does, that’s for sure,” he said perceptively. “He’d never want to. Kath’s got spunk, and a big heart. I’ve always liked that about her. And there’s nothin’ she wouldn’t do for David. I’m glad she understands.”

“She does - more than I even hoped she would, actually,” Sarah said.

Jack leaned in and pressed his lips to her cheek. “You’re sure?” he murmured against her skin.

Sarah smiled, and the contentment in her heart felt as bright and luminous as the stars above them. “So sure, _gelibteh_. I could never regret letting you show all of your beautiful heart.”

Jack tightened his arms around her still more, and moved so that his lips were right next to her ear. “I love you, Sarah Jacobs,” he whispered. “I want to love you for every moment of my life that I have left.”

“I love you,” Sarah whispered back. “And you will, _basherter_. Every moment. We have time.”

 

 

**Historical Notes**

1\. Sarah’s interaction with Mr. Johnson is completely based in fact. Women garment workers were working in sweatshops. They were routinely locked into their workplaces, had their wages docked for tardiness, had their hours arbitrarily shortened or lengthened, and sometimes were fired for no reason at all. It is also true that garment shops (and virtually every other place that employed women) were notorious for sexual harassment, and that foremen would frequently try to coerce women workers into sexual favors.

2\. Much to my frustration, the accessible online resources for the ILGWU are almost as few as those for the railroad unions. As before, I’ll do my best to sort fact from fiction here. It’s true that originally, the ILGWU was organized by men. At the founding meeting in June 1900, four locals were authorized - one in NYC, two in Philadelphia, and one in Baltimore, with others that quickly followed. Cornell University has a good multi-page history of the ILGWU [ here ](http://ilgwu.ilr.cornell.edu/history/index.html) . It is also true that the original locals were entirely male, and that ILGWU organizers assumed that “unskilled” women garment workers could not be organized, partly because women changed jobs more frequently in search of better pay. However, women garment workers did want to be involved, and organized themselves in the face of male indifference to their presence in the garment trades. The Jewish Women’s Archive has a fairly good page about some of these issues [ here ](https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/international-ladies-garment-workers-union) . The petitions in support of the ILGWU, that Sarah claims they signed, are my own invention. It occurs to me that it would not be the first time that women were solicited for their help and support in forming an organization, and then subsequently ignored. There are a couple of scholarly books out there about the ILGWU: _Fannia Cohen and the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union_ , by Ricki Carole Meyers Cohen, 1976, and _Look for the Union Label: A History of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union_ , by Gus Tyler, 1995.

3\. The _Forward_ : The _Jewish Daily Forward_ , which began publication in 1897 and [ is still publishing today ](https://forward.com/). Originally published only in Yiddish, it is one of the oldest Jewish publications and one of the longest-running newspapers in the world. They were also quite consistent (and still are) about supporting women workers and women’s participation in unions.

4\. Shirtwaist: There’s a beautiful old ad for shirtwaists [ here ](https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/triangle-fire-what-shirtwaist/), and a nice description of what they were and why they were considered a fashion innovation.

5\. Hartley House: Hartley House, like University Settlement and Henry Street Settlement, still exists and serves Hell’s Kitchen. It was founded in 1897, and was indeed run by Miss Helen F. Greene; Miss Helen Hall was her assistant. According to [ their current website ](http://www.hartleyhouse.org/) , they are in the process of selling their historic brownstone buildings at West 46th because of maintenance costs. (I do hope that someone will designate the buildings as a historic landmark!) There is also an excellent page on the history of Hartley House [ here ](https://socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/settlement-houses/hartley-house-settlement/) . I realized that I did not include the websites for the history of [ University Settlement ](https://socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/settlement-houses/university-settlement-of-new-york-city/) and [ Henry Street and Greenpoint Settlements ](https://www.gothamcenter.org/blog/settlement-houses-in-new-york-from-past-to-present) in the last chapter, so I’m remedying that now.

6\. I am doing my best with the Yiddish, between two online glossaries and Google Translate, but if anyone is familiar with the language, please correct me! _Neshomeleh_ \-- sweetheart. _Gelibteh_ \- beloved. _Dirast tsu meyn harts_ \- dearest to my heart. _Basherter_ \- beloved, destined one, soulmate. (As far as I could determine, _bashert_ is the concept of fate or destiny, while _basherter_ is to be someone’s soulmate or destined one.)


	8. David & Katherine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> David starts some important conversations, and Katherine experiences The Refuge for the first time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My dears - this has been a _long_ time coming, longer than I wanted, but as I suspected, the semester made it almost completely impossible to write. As always, my betas WickedforGood13 and Nagaem_C have been invaluable, catching my mistakes and awkward sentences and simultaneously being amazing cheerleaders for this story.
> 
> I hope that you all continue to love this, as much as I continue to love writing it. <3

**Chapter Eight: David & Katherine **

Early the following morning, David woke with his head throbbing. Outside the window it was dark, with no hint of sun, but he could hear footsteps and wagon wheels in the street below. It had to be around five, maybe a little earlier.

He blinked slowly, trying to remember the previous day and evening through the pain in his head and his leg. He remembered most of the ride back home, although bits of the conversation were blurry. (He couldn’t _possibly_ have said _that_ to Jack, could he?) He had been up during dinner, and remarkably aware, considering, but there was very little in his memories after that. He remembered his mother, Sarah, and Katherine getting up to clear - he remembered Jack sitting beside him . . . but after that, nothing. He must have fallen asleep, then, which meant he’d had none of his mother’s painkilling tea for close to twelve hours.

He sat up slowly, but regretted it all the same, and he clutched his head with a soft groan.

He heard the click of a door latch and then rustling as a gray shape moved into his field of vision.

“Davey?” Sarah’s voice came quietly out of the dark.

“Sarah?” he said in confusion. “What are you doing awake?”

“I have to get to the factory early this morning. Mr. Johnson nearly had my head yesterday for being one of the last to get there, and some of the girls and I are trying to organize an ILGWU chapter,” Sarah explained. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m okay,” David said, moving carefully to a stable sitting position. “Everything hurts, is all. I knew it would at some point. What did you mean about the ILGWU?”

“Oh,” Sarah said contritely. “I’m so sorry, _kleyn bruder_. You didn’t get any willow bark last night, did you? I have a little time; I’ll make you some tea right now.”

“Are you sure?” David questioned. “I don’t want to make you late.”

“I’m sure,” Sarah said, and he could see her nod. “I’m already dressed; I woke Katherine to help me, but she’s already gone back to sleep. I’ll be right back.”

David leaned back against his pillows as he listened to Sarah moving about in the kitchen. He closed his eyes and drifted into a dozing half-sleep, until he felt Sarah touch his elbow.

“Here you are, _meyn bruder_ ,” Sarah said gently. “Drink up.”

David took the cup and saucer from her and gingerly sipped it. He raised his eyebrows at the taste.

“You added sugar?” he asked Sarah, and she chuckled, sitting beside him on the bed.

“I’m not a purist like Mama. It’s too bitter without it.”

“Well, thank you,” David sighed. “It’s easier to drink this way.”

“You’re lucky a bump on the head and a cut on your leg were all you got, being such a _kochleffel_ ,” she teased, but David could hear the note of worry underneath it.

He snorted in response, trying to reassure her. “Stirring up trouble over nothing; that’s me,” he said wryly. He reached out until he found her hand, giving it a quick squeeze. “I’m all right, _meyn shvester_ . It’s nothing that won’t heal. _Nisht geferlech_.”

“I hope not,” Sarah said soberly. “Even in the fights you were in during the strike, you didn’t come home looking like this.”

“Well, having some warning would have helped,” David acknowledged. “You said Katherine is here; did Jack stay?”

“No,” Sarah answered. “Jack said he was going to sleep at the lodging house. He might have wanted to give Race some warning, and make sure Spot could be there tonight, so he could talk to them both at once. I think he’s going to go straight back to the lodging house after work today.”

David nodded, but thinking of Jack left him tongue-tied. He and Sarah still hadn’t talked about this, and though it had only been twenty-four hours, David felt as though he’d aged decades, shed a skin, something life-altering, since talking with Katherine on the roof. “Sarah -”

“I know,” Sarah said softly. “I have to go, Davey, I really do, but we’ll talk when I get home tonight. _Ikh zag tsu_ .” She stood up, then leaned over and pressed a kiss to his forehead, as she used to do when he was very young. “We’re fine, _kleyn bruder_ . More than fine. Don’t worry. And try not to be a _mossik_ and drive Mama crazy all day,” she added, and he could hear the smile in her voice, caught a glimpse of it in the light from the window.   

“You’re one to talk, _prietsteh_ ,” he tossed back, smiling in his turn, and Sarah laughed before giving his shoulder a squeeze and taking his teacup.

“Is someone walking with you?” he asked.

“Yes, Elsa and Ingrid are meeting me downstairs. We arranged it before we all left yesterday, and you know neither of them live far,” Sarah reminded him.

“Good,” he said, relieved.

He heard Sarah put the cup in the kitchen and get her shawl and lunch pail. Just as the door clicked behind her, it occurred to him that she had never told him what she meant about the ILGWU.

It could wait. His head was, mercifully, starting to pain him less, and he slid back under the covers before his eyes drooped shut.

* * *

 

He woke again an hour or so later. There was slightly more light in the sky, and much more activity in the streets below; the cries of the newsies and the pushcart vendors were already starting to pierce the air.

He realized that there was a weight on his shoulder and turned his head. Katherine was sitting on the edge of the bed, her hand resting on his shoulder, and she smiled when she saw he was awake.

“Good morning, sweetheart. How does your head feel?”

“Better,” David answered, smiling back. “Sarah gave me more tea before she left, and that did wonders.”

“I’m glad. She was gone awfully early.”

“She said something about an ILGWU chapter,” David said, his brow wrinkling. “I’ll have to ask her about it later.”

“We’ll have her fill us both in, hopefully. Have you two talked yet?” Katherine asked carefully, glancing over her shoulder toward the kitchen.

“No,” David said, rubbing a hand over his face. “Sarah promised we would talk when she came home.”

Katherine must have heard the nervousness in his voice, for she put an arm around his shoulders and leaned in and kissed his cheek. “It’s going to be _fine_ , David. Remember that this was Sarah’s thought in the first place. She wants this for you, and for Jack. So do I. Trust us.”

“I do,” David whispered. “It’s just . . . strange, still.”

“I know, sweetheart,” Katherine murmured against his hair. “And Sarah and I can’t sort out your relationship with Jack for you; the two of you have to do that. But we can give you all the time and space and safety you need, and we will.”

David turned his head and kissed her for a long moment. “Thank you,” he said softly. “You are an amazing woman, Katherine Plumber.”  

“Do you think I don’t know that?” Katherine said cheekily, and David laughed. Katherine smiled and kissed him again before leaning back to her normal sitting position, and her timing was impeccable, for David’s mother came into the living room at that moment, bearing a full breakfast tray.

“Good morning, you two,” his mother said. “David, I want you to eat something, and then we should get you up and moving a little. That leg is going to feel even worse if you don’t exercise it.”

“I’ve had breakfast, darling, but I wanted to wake you before I left,” Katherine said, standing. “I have to go back to my father’s before I go to work. I need clean clothes, and my clothes from yesterday have got to be laundered; I can’t interview Warden Collins in a skirt covered in cow’s blood.”

David’s lips twitched at the image. “Yes, I imagine he would look rather askance at that. Is anyone at home going to give you any trouble?” he asked, concerned.

“Home is here,” Katherine corrected him, smiling. “But no. I still have a key, and any of the servants who interfere with me know that they risk Mackenzie’s wrath. None of them dare to upset the butler, you know. He can always find a reason for my father to fire them.”

David grinned. “I really need to meet this man someday.”

“He’s always been a friend - more like an older brother than my actual brothers, a lot of the time,” Katherine said fondly. “Now, I need to get going, and you need to eat some breakfast and keep healing. Fiancée’s orders.”

“I’ll do my best.”

“Good.” Katherine kissed him lightly in farewell, this time, before making her way toward the door. “I’ll see you tonight, and if for some reason I can’t get back, I’ll let you know.”

“Thank you. And be careful, dear one,” David added. “Watch yourself, with Collins and the older boys.”

“I will,” Katherine promised, and with that, she pinned on her hat, blew him one more kiss, and was gone.

“She’s a good woman, your Katherine,” his mother said quietly, as she stepped back, having arranged things on the tray so that David could eat.

“She is,” David agreed fondly. “I honestly don’t know what I would do without her.”

His mother smiled. “That’s a good indicator that you’ve found the right person, _tatelleh_.” Esther paused, and when she spoke again it was more hesitant. “What would you think about having Les sell the evening edition?”

David raised his eyebrows. “Go back to selling papers? What about school?”

“He could still go to school,” his mother said. “He would just sell the late edition afterward, and then come straight home. Jack was talking to him yesterday, and he pointed out to me that your brother has more energy than he knows what to do with. Les misses selling papers and seeing the other newsies, and so I thought if he sold the late edition, it might keep him happier and more content while he was in school.”

David considered. “It’s a good idea. Les probably would like it, and it would keep him busier. What does Papa say?”

“I haven’t asked him yet,” his mother admitted. “You know your brother, and I wanted to see what you thought.”

David smiled. “I think Les would jump at the chance, Mama. If he goes to school and then sells, he might be less antsy and more inclined to finish his homework and sleep, when he gets home. No promises, but it might work.”

Esther laughed. “That’s what I thought. I’ll talk to your father. Eat some breakfast, David.”

“And for what it’s worth,” David added, reaching for his bread and butter, “I think he misses feeling useful, like he’s contributing. There’s something to be said for that, too.”

Esther nodded, her expression sobering. “That’s true. It’s hard to take that away from him, and maybe not fair. We don’t really need the help anymore, but it’s something that matters to Les.”

“It’s good of you to think of it, Mama.”

“It was really Jack who planted the thought,” his mother said. “I am so glad he is part of the family now.”

David reached out and squeezed his mother’s hand. “Me, too, Mama. Me, too.”

* * *

 

Katherine unlocked the back door to her father’s house, slipping into the servants’ stairwell and through the back hallway to the kitchen. As she had hoped, she found Mackenzie in the butler’s pantry, preparing breakfast platters for the dining room.

“Mackenzie,” she said quietly, waiting in the doorway.

The butler looked up, and a smile broke over his face at the sight of her. “Miss Katherine. It’s good to see you, _aon bheag_.” His smile faded as he looked her up and down. “What have you been doing? Your clothes are a disaster.”

“I know,” Katherine said ruefully. “I was in Hell’s Kitchen yesterday, working on a story. It’s disgusting, to say the least.”

“None of that is yours?” Mackenzie asked in concern, gesturing to the bloodstains on her skirt.

“No,” Katherine reassured him. “Just animal blood, from the slaughterhouses.”

“You go on upstairs and take those off, and find something clean,” Mackenzie ordered. “Give them to me, and I’ll make sure they’re laundered.”

“Thank you,” Katherine said. “You’re a lifesaver, as always.”

“Someone needs to be looking after you, _nighean fiadhaich_ ,” Mackenzie grumbled affectionately. “You always did dive headfirst into everything.”

“David looks after me now, too, you know,” Katherine smiled.

“He looks after your heart,” Mackenzie returned. “Your emotions, aye? But he doesn’a keep you from going where you will or doing what you like, no matter the danger. I’m not saying he should,” he added, seeing the anger simmering in Kath’s eyes. “I’ve the impression he’s no’ the sort of man to fetter you, and you wouldn’a tolerate anyone who would. But there’s something to be said for caring for the body, too, and you’re too heedless of your own physical well-being, Miss Katherine. You always were.”

“David would look after me if I asked,” Katherine said, her chin going up. “I just don’t ask. I’m not a wilting flower, Mackenzie. I take Denton with me if I feel unsafe on a story, and David has his own battles to fight, his own job to keep. He has a hard enough time keeping himself safe; he doesn’t need to worry about me.”

“Yet he does all the same, I’m sure,” Mackenzie said dryly, and Katherine’s eyes softened.

“He does. I worry about him, too,” she admitted. “But we both do what we feel we must, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“Well, you will always have protection from this quarter, Miss Katherine,” Mackenzie averred. “I’ve known ye since you were a wee lass, and even if no one else in this house cares what becomes of ye, I do.”

Katherine smiled shakily, and the butler returned her smile. “I know you do. I appreciate it,” she said softly. “Would you be willing to see to something else for me?”

“What do you need, _aon bheag?”_

“The two trunks in my room, and the other travel trunk - at some point I will have to get them to the Jacobs’,” Katherine explained. “Not yet. I have to pack the travel trunk still, and I don’t know where they’re going to go; I have to talk to David’s mother. I can bring David and Jack, if I need to, but it would be easier if we had some help here - and if I knew when Mother and Father were going to be out of the house.”

“You can count on me, Miss Katherine,” Mackenzie nodded. “You let me know when you need to get them, and I can tell you when the master and missus will be gone.”

“Thank you, Mackenzie,” Katherine said. On impulse, she reached out and hugged the older man. “You’ve always been so good to me.”

Mackenzie gently returned the hug. “You’ve always felt like my own little sister, Miss Katherine.” He pulled back and put his hands on her shoulders. “If you ever need to, you can find myself and Marcail in Bay Ridge, aye? If I’m not here, I’m home with her and my little Finella, usually on my days off.”

“Bay Ridge,” Katherine said wonderingly. “Brooklyn? I had no idea you lived there. I can have Spot find you if I need to.”

Mackenzie threw back his head and laughed. “Aye, ye ken,” he agreed. “Sean is a rascal, but he’s tough and resourceful, and I know he thinks the world of you, _nighean fiadhaich._ He can always find me, or send one of his boys.”

Katherine stared at him, then began to giggle helplessly, leaning against the counter. “ _Sean_ ,” she said in delight. “I might be the only one of the newsies besides Race who knows Spot’s given name.”

“Don’t tell him I told you,” Mackenzie said, his lips twitching. “He’d have my head, and probably never speak to me again.”

“Oh, my lips are sealed,” Katherine promised, still laughing. “That’s a piece of information that’s only to be used under desperate circumstances.”

“Brooklyn isn’a a bad place to be. Marcail and I wanted Finella to grow up in a real home. We didn’a want her growing up under someone else’s roof, aye?” Mackenzie said soberly. “I owe your father a great deal, and I will always be grateful to him, but I want Finella to have her own life and her own choices. I’ll be proud if she grows up with as much will of her own as you have, Miss Katherine. And if she gets it from anywhere, it will be from her mother,” Mackenzie said with a chuckle. “Marcail has enough stubbornness and decision for a dozen people.”

Katherine smiled at the description of Marcail. “I would love to meet her sometime, and Finella too,” Katherine said. “They sound lovely.” She understood that Mackenzie was trusting her, confiding so much of his own life to her when she was only ever supposed to know him as her father’s butler. “I think Finella will be lucky if she takes after her father.”

“She’s my precious darlin’,” Mackenzie said warmly, his eyes shining at the thought of his daughter. “Now, off wi’ ye, Miss Katherine. You’re going to be terribly late.”

“I still have some time,” Katherine called over her shoulder as she started up the stairs. “I made sure I left early.”

Just before she rounded the turn in the stairs, Katherine saw Mackenzie shaking his head at her - but he was still smiling.

She hurried through her change of clothing once she reached her room, pulling on a navy blue walking suit and a clean shirtwaist before running back downstairs. She left her soiled clothes with Mackenzie, thanking him once more, and dashed out the door toward the trolley stop.

She went to _The Sun_ first, retrieved her notes and a notepad from her desk, and said good morning to Denton, letting him know she was leaving for The Refuge, before she headed out again. (It was reassuring to know that Denton, at least, knew where she was going and when she had left, despite how loath she would have been to admit that to anyone. David and Jack and Sarah all knew that she was interviewing Collins today, but it was better if someone had an exact timeline, just in case.)

Her second trolley trip of the morning took Katherine to 26th Street, where she had to walk down to the pier to catch the ferry that went to Randall’s and Ward’s Islands. As she waited for the approaching boat, she thought about the precious coins in her hand that would have been the difference between Skittery’s mother having rent or having bread, and about the day’s worth of work that Mrs. Goodwin would have lost, doing this, trying to get her son back. It made her heart ache.

As the boat pulled alongside the dock, however, her focus shifted. There were horses and carriages in the middle section of the ferry, being guided onto the dock by the ferry crew and the drivers, and then standing to wait for their masters to disembark. Suddenly, Katherine understood how Jack had been able to escape The Refuge, and a grin spread over her face. He could have literally ridden the underside of Roosevelt’s carriage straight onto the ferry, and climbed off the carriage in Manhattan with no one the wiser, as long as he was careful not to be seen.

While she paced the deck as the ferry traversed the river, however, it occurred to Katherine to wonder what Jack had done in his escapes before Roosevelt. She knew, if only through the occasional allusion he made, that he had escaped one or two other times, for shorter periods. While it was entirely possible that Jack, as a small boy, had managed to hide himself away on the ferry, even without the use of something so convenient as a carriage, it made Katherine sick to look at the choppy, swirling water around Randall’s Island. Would he have been desperate enough to try and swim?

An image of a tiny, soaked Jack, shivering and exhausted as he climbed onto the Manhattan dock, appeared in her mind’s eye, and it was enough to make Katherine close her eyes in pain. Jack had become her brother in all the ways that mattered, and all at once she understood, in a much more immediate way, the fury that had been consuming David. There was nothing she would not have done to help that little boy.

(She would have to ask Jack, sometime, how he had succeeded in escaping the first few times, if only to banish that picture from her brain.)

Jack, thank the Lord, had made it out. But Smalls was still here. Smalls she could help. Smalls she _would_ help, no matter what she had to do.

As the ferry pulled up to the dock in front of The Refuge, Katherine assessed the massive building in front of her, with its imposing brick construction and two large wings, and a secondary building off to the side. They were very large and well-built, but the whole place felt cold and had a forbidding air. Katherine was sure that Snyder never would have let any of the children outside; aside from the risk of the river, they could wander onto the grounds of the mental asylum, and any outdoor time would take them away from Snyder’s surveillance. In any case, there was nothing around the building except a few trees, no play equipment or anything that indicated the presence of children.

Katherine brushed down her skirt and straightened her jacket before stepping onto the dock, squaring her shoulders and pulling her professionalism around her like a cloak. She had a job to do, and if Jack could endure this place for years, she could stand to be inside it for a few hours. She tightened her lips and marched toward the entrance.

There was a bell pull next to the massive front door, and as Katherine pulled it she heard a loud clang somewhere in the interior of the building. Two or three minutes later, the door was answered by an older girl, perhaps fourteen or fifteen. Her brown hair was in two neat braids down her back, and while her dress was of rough blue cloth, it appeared to be clean and neat.

“Hello,” Katherine said, trying a smile. “I’m Katherine Plumber; I have an appointment with Warden Collins.”

“Yes, Miss. He said you’d be coming. If you’ll just follow me,” the girl said, standing aside to let her in. She didn’t smile, but she seemed relieved that Katherine was friendly, so Kath decided to see what she could learn.

“Thank you. What’s your name?” Katherine asked.

“I’m Eugenia, Miss.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Eugenia.”

Eugenia nodded, but didn’t offer anything further, and Katherine knew not to press her luck. She had spent enough time around Jack and the other newsies to know when she had hit someone’s personal boundaries - and for some of the boys, those boundaries were very wide. Eugenia had apparently built the same kind of wide walls.

Katherine looked around as they walked through the foyer and up the stairs, catching glimpses of what appeared to be classrooms and workrooms, and as they reached the third floor, bunkrooms. Eugenia led her to a heavy door with a brass nameplate, bearing “Warden Collins” as its inscription. She raised her hand to knock, but hesitated, looking over at Katherine.

“Can I just say, Miss - you have the most beautiful hair,” Eugenia said shyly, and Katherine’s heart melted.

“Thank you! That’s so very sweet of you,” Katherine answered, smiling at her again, and this time she got a tentative smile in return before Eugenia knocked.

“Enter,” called a male voice, and Eugenia opened the door, letting Katherine follow.

“Miss Plumber is here, sir,” Eugenia said.

“Thank you, Eugenia,” the warden said, giving her a kind smile. “I appreciate it. I’ll call you to show Miss Plumber out when we’re done.”

“Yes, sir,” Eugenia said, bobbing a slightly awkward curtsy. As she left, she gave Katherine another small smile, which Katherine returned.

“Hello, Miss Plumber,” Warden Collins greeted her, rising from behind his desk and stretching out a hand. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.”

Warden Collins was a slender man, with straight dark brown hair that was neatly combed, and brown eyes behind gold horn-rimmed spectacles. He wore a black three-piece suit that was well-kept, and both his air and his expression suggested friendliness. It was hard to imagine a greater contrast to Warden Snyder, but Katherine reminded herself not to be fooled by first impressions.

“The pleasure’s all mine, Warden,” Katherine said, shaking his hand and giving him her best smile. “Thank you so much for agreeing to meet with me.”

“I’ve admired your work with Mr. Denton for quite some time, young lady,” Collins said. “The two of you are doing some of the best reporting in the city, in my opinion. I only wish there were more of you. Please, sit down.” Collins took his own chair, and Katherine sat in the chair that was in front of his desk.

“Well, thank you, that’s very flattering,” Katherine said warmly. “I will pass that on to Mr. Denton, too; he will certainly appreciate it. I hope you don’t mind that it’s just me on this story?”

“Not at all,” Collins answered. “I was delighted you asked; I’m very glad to have a chance to change the public’s opinion of The Refuge. This place has a very mixed history, and I’m doing all I can to turn it back into an institution of positive change.”

Katherine leaned forward. “It does have quite the checkered history,” she said carefully. “Can you tell me something about the problems you found here a year ago, when you took over from Warden Snyder?”

Collins’ expression darkened. “It would be easier to give you a list of the problems I didn’t find, Miss Plumber. Snyder ran this place in a way that was unforgivable. He didn’t treat these children like children, or even like humans. He treated them like animals, and he ruled by fear, which is no way to reform anyone’s behavior. Animals attack when they are cornered. Children are still very much creatures of instinct, and when they are treated poorly and abused, it destroys their trust. It’s no wonder they turn to crime and try to survive on their own, when they’ve learned from a very young age that adults won’t help them and will often hurt them.”

“So you found that many of the children had been abused,” Katherine clarified quietly.

“Absolutely,” Collins confirmed. “Both physically and mentally. I had to start completely over, rearrange how the children socialized, how they were divided in the sleeping quarters, in the classrooms and at meals, establish new rules of interaction between the children and me, and between the children and the teachers. The children had to know from the start that things were going to be different, and that I wasn’t going to be another Snyder. They still weren’t at all inclined to trust me, but at least by creating a new daily pattern, I was disrupting whatever norms they might have established under Snyder.”

“That seems sound,” Katherine nodded.

“It has helped,” Collins said, taking off his spectacles and rubbing at his eyes. “It hasn’t fixed everything, but it has helped. I also had a doctor here every day for the first few weeks, looking after any wounds or illnesses the children had. I was appalled by how little care they seemed to have been given - and by how many injuries they had,” he added tiredly.

“That’s very good of you,” Katherine said. “How did you change their routine?”

“The children had been separated by sex, in their sleeping and their work, but not by age, and I saw that as a problem,” Collins explained. “Older children will often bully younger ones, or make them do extra work, and it creates - again - a dynamic of fear. So, in addition to separating the children by sex, I also separated them by age. The oldest children, from sixteen to nineteen, share dorms and classes and work shifts, then children eleven to fifteen, then children seven to ten, and four- to six-year-olds. Children younger than 4 are in their own group, and the youngest two groups have additional adult care and supervision. I give the oldest children in each group some supervision duties, which helps them learn responsibility and feel more grown-up. They spend four hours at school and three hours at work, plus meals and socializing every day. Everyone is allowed to mingle at meals and during social time, which is particularly important for the children who are here with their siblings. I have found, however, that having the children who are similar ages work, study, and sleep together makes a great deal of difference in how safe they feel. They aren’t constantly feeling threatened by those who are older and bigger than they are.”

“Doesn’t that also negate the possibility of creating sibling-like bonds between some of the older and younger children?” Katherine asked thoughtfully, thinking of the often carefully-paired newsies, where the older ones would act as teachers and caretakers for the younger ones. “Obviously those who already have siblings here will understand what that’s like, but for the others -”

“Yes, that’s an important point,” Collins said with a smile. “Your reputation for sharpness is not unwarranted, Miss Plumber. We do have some organized activities where we pair older children with younger ones. Sometimes during work shifts we will have, for example, the oldest group pair with the eleven- to fifteen-year-olds, for the purposes of teaching the younger ones a skill. Those sessions are always supervised, either by me or by one of the other teachers, and we stress patience and step-by-step instruction. Another example is storytime,” Collins said with a smile. “The younger children love to be read to by the older ones, and it is good for them, so we do that at least once a week.”

Katherine smiled at the mental picture. “You do seem to be doing as much as can possibly be done for them. What happens when someone misbehaves or acts out? Surely it does happen.”

“Of course,” Collins agreed. “Children are imperfect, they’re still learning, and the ones here are trying to undo behaviors they have learned from years of neglect. It does happen, and not infrequently, though it’s much better than when I first arrived. Most of the time, we are able to talk with the child until we understand what happened and where their behavior is coming from, and hopefully help them see where it is coming from as well. If it is an instance where they need to apologize to someone else, we try to get them to apologize of their own volition. If it is something where a more severe punishment is needed, we try to get them to choose something that feels like a sufficient consequence. They might miss a social period, or miss an outdoor work shift, which many of the children look forward to. However, we always try to make sure they understand why they are being punished, and that they feel the punishment is fair.”

“I have it on good authority that Snyder made extensive use of corporal punishment,” Katherine said, trying to suppress her anger at the thought. “I take it you don’t subscribe to the same philosophy?”

“Not for a minute,” Collins said firmly, sitting up and fixing Katherine with a hard gaze. “Is that not what I have just been saying? Miss Plumber, the injuries on some of these children and young adults indicated long-term, repeated physical cruelty. Some of them will still have permanent marks. And some of the ones who seemed to escape Snyder’s hands and whip are often so quiet as to be practically mute. They will do anything they are asked because they are so frightened of being hurt, and they will not so much as offer a preference when asked a question. Eugenia is one of the latter, and I must confess I was astonished to see her smile at you. She does not take to people easily. But the last thing that I would do to any of my charges would be to raise a hand to them. It would undo everything I’ve tried to do in the last year, in the blink of an eye.”

“Forgive me for the clarification, Mr. Collins,” Katherine apologized. What she didn’t say was that asking a question in different ways often elicited different, and telling, responses, and that Collins had helped to prove his sincerity with his consistency. “It wasn’t my intention to insult you or question your methods; in fact, I applaud you for them. You seem to be modeling fairness and compassion for them in every area, which is wonderful. I was just trying to understand the degree of difference between what The Refuge is like now, under your leadership, and what it was like under Warden Snyder. It must be a monumental change from the children’s perspective, even if it is for the better.”

“Yes,” Collins said with a sigh. “And some of them still don’t trust it, particularly the older ones who have been here for quite some time. Why would they? They have known more cruelty than kindness, and kindness has always been for the purposes of manipulation.”  

Katherine thought of Jack, and how he had been when she first knew him: instinctively warm, caring, and playful toward the newsies, but cocky and smug and defensive to those outside their circle, and downright cold and hard to most adults. She nodded in acknowledgement of Collins’ observations.

Collins rose from his chair and gestured toward the door. “I’d be happy to show you how we have everything arranged, Miss Plumber. Seeing it all is probably a better illustration than simply having me describe it.”

Katherine rose as well and smiled at the warden. “That would be helpful, thank you.”

Warden Collins proceeded to walk her through the dormitories, the classrooms, and the workshops that were set up for the children’s use, and in some cases were currently in use. All of the children Katherine saw were clean and neat, and none of them had the pinched look of children who didn’t get enough to eat. While the classrooms and bunkrooms were basic to the point of being spartan, they were clean. Some of the children were rambunctious, but they never seemed out of control, and the teachers seemed fond of their students.

In the classroom with the eleven to fifteen-year-olds, Katherine immediately spotted Smalls. She knew who he was without being told; he was almost comically like his older brother, all limbs and wavy hair and brown eyes. Collins had been talking to her while the children recited their spelling, but he noticed her distraction.

“What is it, Miss Plumber? Do you know one of the children?” he asked, his brow furrowed.

“I do,” Katherine answered. “We’ve never met, but - that boy, there,” she said, surreptitiously pointing to Smalls. “Is he Nicholas Goodwin?”

“He is,” Collins said slowly. “How on earth did you know that?”

“Can we step out for just a moment?” Katherine asked. “I don’t want to distract the children.”

Collins nodded obligingly, though his expression was puzzled, and the two of them went back out into the hallway.

“I have a confession to make, Mr. Collins,” Katherine said, looking the older man in the eyes. “Nicholas was my other reason for coming here today. I very much wanted to do this story, but it turns out that I also know Nicholas’ family. His brother wanted me to bring a letter for him, and I was hoping I could also talk to you about what it would take to get him released. His mother and siblings miss him very much.”

Collins’ eyebrows went up. “I wasn’t aware that Nicholas had any family, Miss Plumber,” he said in surprise. “Is his brother one of the newsies you worked so hard to help?”

“Yes, Skittery - Daniel,” Katherine corrected herself. She gave the warden a rueful little grin. “I’m sorry; I’m so used to using their nicknames. Daniel is the eldest brother. Nicholas’ mother and younger siblings are also here in the city.”

“Well, that is definitely new information,” Collins said, and he was clearly perturbed. “Warden Snyder’s records were irregular, to say the least, and I didn’t know anything about Nicholas beyond his sentence for vagrancy. I’ve never had anyone approach me to say they were his family.”

“His mother works very hard, sir, and she doesn’t have the means to come retrieve him, if you understand me,” Katherine said tactfully. “Daniel also does what he can, but they aren’t in a position to get Smalls - Nicholas - back without help.”

Collins nodded. “I do understand you, unfortunately. Do you have Daniel’s letter with you?”

At Katherine’s return nod, Collins opened the classroom door and went in. He reappeared a moment later with Smalls next to him.  

“Nicholas, this is Miss Plumber,” Collins introduced them. “Miss Plumber, Nicholas Goodwin.”

Katherine smiled down at the boy. “It’s so nice to meet you,” she said, holding out a hand. “You don’t know me, but I know your brother, Skittery.”

Smalls looked her up and down and gave her a challenging stare. “You’re a lady. Skittery don’t know no ladies,” he said derisively. “Prove it.”

“Nicholas!” Mr. Collins chided him, chagrined. “That isn’t any way to speak to someone you’ve just met.”

Katherine gave a tiny shake of her head and winked at Collins. “All right, fine,” she said to Smalls. She worked the glove off of her right hand and decisively spat into her palm before holding her hand out to Smalls. “Katherine Plumber. Pleased to meet you.”

Collins looked vaguely horrified, but Smalls grinned. He spat into his own palm and shook. “That’s more like it. You’re all right,” he said approvingly.

Katherine grinned back at him. “Skittery gave me a letter for you,” she said. Luckily, she could reach into her jacket pocket with her left hand, and she handed the letter to Smalls. “He wanted you to know that everyone is fine, and that he misses you.”

Smalls took the letter carefully, and he looked up at Katherine in awe. “Skittery’s never wrote me a letter before.”

“Well, he has now,” Katherine said. “I just saw him the other day, and he asked me to bring this to you.”

Smalls smiled a little, tracing the letters of his name with a finger. He looked hesitantly up at Collins. “Sir,  can I - _may_ I go read my brother’s letter?”

“I’ll allow it this once,” Collins said kindly. “Make sure you’re back in class by the beginning of the next hour, young man.”

“I will, sir,” Smalls said eagerly. “Thank you.” He paused and looked back at Katherine. “Thank you for bringing this, Katherine.”

“You’re welcome,” Katherine responded kindly.

Smalls hurried off, letter in hand, and Katherine discreetly removed her handkerchief from a pocket and wiped her palm. “He seems to like you,” she said to Collins. “That’s a good thing.”

“He’s one of the easier ones to manage,” Collins said. “He responds to kindness. Knowing that he has an older brother and a mother who care for him explains a lot. Miss Plumber, why don’t we go back to my office, and we’ll see what we can do about getting Nicholas home to his family?”

Katherine gave him a genuine, brilliant smile. “That would be wonderful.”

As they made their way back toward the Warden’s office and quarters, Katherine ventured a question.

“Warden Collins - you said that Warden Snyder left very erratic records,” she said. “Does that mean there are others here who might have families, and you just don’t know it?”

Collins nodded. “That’s the truth, I’m afraid. As I said, we have some siblings here, and some of the other children have mentioned parents or siblings, but unless someone comes to us, there’s no way to know who is still in the city, or even still living. I have everything I can do, and so do the teachers, to tend to the children every day. It would take another person working full-time, probably, to go through the records, interview the children, and try to find any living, local family. I had to go through and create an entirely new list of who was in residence here when I first arrived; Snyder’s records didn’t seem to contain even that much.”

Katherine nodded. “Have you thought about reaching out to the Children’s Aid Society, or the settlement houses? Many of the workers at the settlement houses are familiar with the local families in their neighborhoods. If you sent them a copy of your list, they might be able to inquire about any children with familiar names.”

Collins’ face brightened. “That’s an excellent idea, Miss Plumber, and one that I hadn’t thought of,” he admitted. “I can write to the settlement houses this week, and see if they are able to provide me with any leads.”

With that they reached Collins’ office, and he opened the door, allowing Katherine to go through first.

“I’ll be frank with you, Miss Plumber,” he said, sitting down and folding his hands atop his desk, looking at her intently. “If Nicholas would rather be at home with his family, my inclination is not to keep him at The Refuge. I’m familiar with his court record, at least, and a small offense like vagrancy should not have resulted in four years here, not when he was so young, and not even with his past charge for the same thing. I’m assuming his sentence was the result of Warden Snyder’s bribery racket. He’s mostly a good child, and even if his family is poor, I think he would be better off with them. Children who are lucky enough to have family who love them should be able to take advantage of that.”

Katherine sat, clasping her hands together tightly and trying to control her eagerness. “Do you mean that, sir? If Smalls says he wants to go back to his family, you’re willing to allow it?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” the warden nodded. “I have discretion in cases such as these, particularly when family comes to petition for a child’s release. Smalls has already served three of his four years, has a record of good behavior, and I was unaware that he had family. It seems unethical for me _not_ to allow his release.”

“Would you - would you entrust him to me, sir?” Katherine asked pleadingly. “You understand that his mother is not in a position to come herself - not that she doesn’t want to, but that she simply can’t lose a day’s wages? I could probably manage to bring Skittery with me, so that Smalls can identify him and you know for certain he is leaving with a family member. The other newsies would be happy to help Skittery for a day and cover his sales, if it means that he can bring Smalls home.”

“They’re a loyal group, aren’t they?” Collins noted. “Yes, Miss Plumber, I would be happy to entrust Nicholas to you, and if you can bring Daniel with you, so much the better. That way I will have covered all my bases as far as record keeping, and can truthfully say that Nicholas was released to family, with your benevolent assistance.”

Katherine rose and held out a hand. When the warden took it, she clasped her other hand around his as well. “Thank you, Mr. Collins,” she said earnestly. “This will mean the world to Nicholas’ family, it really will.”

“You are very welcome, Miss Plumber,” the warden smiled. “Give me a day or two to talk to Nicholas and prepare him - I’ll make sure he knows that it is you and his brother who will be coming for him, if he chooses. Shall we say next Tuesday? I will be in touch before then, of course.”

“Next Tuesday sounds perfect,” Katherine beamed. “I can talk to Skittery tomorrow. And Mr. Collins, if I may ask - other than more hands, what is it that you would want most here, if you could have anything?”

The warden sighed. “Things that bring beauty, Miss Plumber. This is a utilitarian but dreary place. We receive enough from the state to feed and clothe everyone, and make sure they have comfortable beds and schoolbooks, and tools for the workshops, and wringers for the laundry. It’s amazing how far the money will go when a third of it isn’t spent on kickbacks,” he added wryly. “But items like - oh, window curtains, or nicer cloth for the children’s clothing, or hair ribbons for the girls and caps for the boys. Perhaps some drawing and painting supplies. More books. Yarn and needles, so that we could teach the children to knit. Even money for things like flowers and landscaping is hard to come by. I would like the children to know that even simple things can create some beauty and happiness in life. They have so little of either.”

Katherine nodded. “I’ll see what I can do,” she promised.

“Thank you,” Collins said. “I am glad to know that you approve of our efforts here. Warden Snyder left a painful legacy behind him, and I am doing everything I can to make sure that as much of it as possible is eradicated.”

“Yes, I can see that. Can I ask - would you mind if, when Eugenia shows me out, she takes me to the dining room and the kitchen, first? I didn’t get to see them on the way in.”

“Certainly,” Collins acquiesced readily. “Eugenia seems to like you, and I am happy to see her a little brighter. She can take you anywhere you like before you leave.”

“Thank you, sir,” Katherine said sincerely. “It’s been a pleasure meeting with you. I will see you next Tuesday.”

“I look forward to it,” Collins said. He pressed a small buzzer on the wall behind his desk, and a knock came in just a few moments. At Collins’ summons, Eugenia entered.

“Eugenia, please take Miss Plumber to the kitchen and the dining room, and anywhere else she would like, before you show her out,” Collins said.

“Yes, sir,” Eugenia nodded. Collins and Katherine exchanged nods and smiles before Katherine followed Eugenia out into the hallway.

“Why did you want to see the dining room and kitchen, Miss?” Eugenia said curiously. “They aren’t anything fancy.”

“I just wanted to see a little more of where all of you spend your time,” Katherine said easily. “Is the food good?”

Eugenia nodded. “Better, since Warden Collins came,” she said. “It was terrible under Snyder. There was never enough, and whatever there was always tasted bad. I was glad to see him go.”

“I’m sure you weren’t the only one,” Katherine murmured. The dining room was a large room filled with trestle tables and long benches, and like everywhere else, it was clean and tidy. Some of the children were going about setting the tables. Eugenia guided her through the room to the back, where a large kitchen was already bustling with preparations for the dinner meal. Some of the older girls and boys were helping to cook.

“Do you help with the cooking, Eugenia?” Katherine asked.

“Sometimes,” the girl answered, making a face. “We all take turns. I’m not very good at it.”

“I’ll tell you a secret - nether am I,” Katherine said, chuckling. “I’m learning, though. It’s a helpful thing to know how to do.”

On their way back toward the front door, Katherine spotted a small downward staircase off of the main entrance hall, ending in a heavy door. She halted abruptly, causing Eugenia to pause and turn around.

“Eugenia, where does that go?” Katherine asked, trying to keep her voice steady. She had a terrible feeling that she knew, but she wanted to be certain.

“I can’t take you down there, Miss Plumber,” Eugenia said, her voice hushed. “It’s where Warden Snyder used to put people in solitary and - and punish them. Warden Collins never uses those rooms, though. When he came, he locked up that level of the building and said he would never put any of us down there again. He never has.”

“Thank God for that,” Katherine said fervently.

Eugenia hesitated before she spoke again. “You know Jack, don’t you, Miss Plumber?”

“I do know Jack,” Katherine said in surprise. “But he escaped here years ago. Surely you -” she started, then stopped, realizing how tactless she was about to be.

Eugenia’s mouth twisted, and some of the blankness returned to her face as she said, “I’ve been here since I was six, Miss. My parents are dead, and there’s no one else.”

“I’m so sorry,” Katherine said softly.

Eugenia shrugged in pretend indifference, though Katherine was well-versed enough in body language to see that she was masking how much she felt.

“It was a long time ago. It was awful when I first got here, but that’s what I wanted to ask. Would you tell Jack I said thank you, and that it’s better here, now? I think he’d like to know that.”

“Of course,” Katherine assured her.

Eugenia nodded her thanks, her face relaxing again.  “I only knew him for about two years before he left for good, but he was always kind to us little ones - he brought us extra food sometimes, and kept the older students from bothering us. He took the punishments for it, too,” she added, her voice low, and she threw another frightened glance at the locked door.

Katherine’s eyes filled with tears, but she blinked them back. “I’ll be happy to tell him,” she said. “You’re right; he would like to know.”

The two of them resumed walking. “Warden Collins is ever so much kinder than Snyder,” Eugenia offered. “He says that I’m old enough now that he’ll look for a job for me if I want, or maybe see if I could get a scholarship to one of the high schools. I’m one of the best students here,” she finished shyly.

“Good for you,” Katherine praised her. “That’s important. I’m glad to know that Mr. Collins is thinking about employments and placements for all of you. You deserve to have a life of your own, where you can take care of yourself.”

“That’s what he says, too.”

They reached the front door, and Eugenia opened it, looking rather wistful. “It was nice to meet you, Miss Plumber.”

“It was lovely to meet you, too, Eugenia. I’ll be back next week, so you’ll see me then,” Katherine told her, and the girl’s face brightened.

“I’d like that. Have a good day, Miss,” she said, curtsying again, and Katherine nodded and smiled at her before she closed the door.

Katherine made it back to the almost-empty dock before her emotions and her body got the best of her, and she let out a quiet sob. She hastily pressed a gloved hand to her mouth and lowered her head, trying to hide her tears from the one or two others waiting for the ferry.

She had done it. She was going to get Smalls out of there, get him home to his family. And Warden Collins seemed to be doing his best to make The Refuge a useful and safe place, a shelter and a learning institution for children who desperately needed it. It wasn’t really a home, and Katherine wasn’t sure that anything could transform it into being truly warm and welcoming, but at least Collins was trying and treated the children fairly.

On the other hand, she couldn’t shake the images that simply _being_ there had planted in her head. It broke her heart to think of Jack, of Crutchie, of the other newsies who had done stints there under Snyder, living in such a dreary place and in constant terror of the warden. When Kath thought of what Snyder had done to them, to Smalls and Eugenia, to Crutchie and especially Jack, she thought she might be sick. It was really a good thing that Eugenia hadn’t been able to show her the lower level. She wouldn’t be able to stop imagining it; her brain was conjuring up enough terrible images without having the reality of those dark cells to draw upon.

And the sheer _number_ of children had been overwhelming; Katherine had estimated that there must be several hundred in residence. Smalls and Eugenia were old enough to be talked to and reasoned with, but how on earth did the teachers and staff take care of the truly little children? Even if that was a major part of their duties, how did they balance that intensive caretaking with the other things they were expected to do? How did Mrs. Goodwin manage to look after the three children she had, and still baste coats from dawn until dusk . . .?

Katherine realized her breathing had turned rapid and panicky, and she clenched her hands into fists, deliberately taking a long breath. _Pull yourself together, Plumber_ , she told herself sternly. _Not the time. You will talk to David about this, and it will be fine, but this is not the moment to lose it. You did a good thing today, and you have a story to write. You have a child to bring home to his mother in a few days, and other children who need help. Do your job._

The ferry boat was coming back up the river; Katherine saw it approaching. She thought again of Jack and his desperate escapes, at least one of which had been on that same ferry. She couldn’t undo the terrible things that had happened to him, but she would have good things to tell him the next time she saw him. Maybe knowing that life was better for Eugenia and some of the others would at least take the sting out of the fact that The Refuge continued to exist. Katherine hoped that someday, they would all live to see a world in which such places were not necessary.    


 

**Historical Notes**

_1\. Kleyn bruder_ \- little brother. _Meyn bruder_ \- my brother. _Kochleffel_ \- soup ladle, one who stirs up trouble, busy-body. _Meyn shvester_ \- my sister. _Nisht geferlech_ \- I’ve had worse. _Ikh zag tsu_ \- I promise. _Mossik_ \- mischief-maker, imp. _Prietsteh_ \- princess, prima donna.  

2\. In 1900, The Refuge was in fact on Randall’s Island and only accessible by boat. It was originally in Manhattan, but moved to Randall’s Island in 1854. There were no bridges to the island until 1916. However, there were ferries that took carriages to the island, such as the ones [ pictured in this post ](http://blog.robertbrucestewart.com/2013/08/crossing-new-york-by-ferry-in-1900.html). Therefore, it would have been possible for Jack to ride out of The Refuge on Roosevelt’s carriage, onto the ferry, with potentially no one the wiser. In addition to The Refuge, in 1899 the island was home to the Manhattan Psychiatric Center, which housed about 4,400 patients (it incorporated the former insane asylum that was already on the island).

3\. The Scots Gaelic is courtesy of Google Translate. _aon bheag_ \- little one. _nighean fiadhaich_ \- wild girl.

4\. Bay Ridge was historically an Irish and Italian neighborhood as well as a vacation resort (see [ here ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bay_Ridge,_Brooklyn) ,   [ here ](https://www.tripsavvy.com/photos-of-brooklyns-neighborhoods-4123549) , and [ here ](https://www.heyridge.com/2016/08/when-bay-ridge-was-a-vacation-destination-to-rival-coney-island/)), but it didn’t seem impossible to me that a Scotsman might choose to have a home there, an area of Brooklyn that was considered at least middle-class and respectable - and having Spot and Mackenzie interact was just too irresistible.  :)

5\. The New York State Archives has [ a great guide ](http://www.archives.nysed.gov/common/archives/files/res_topics_ed_reform.pdf) to its collection of materials on The Refuge and its history. The blog _US Prison Culture_ has an excellent [ entry about The Refuge ](http://www.usprisonculture.com/blog/2011/02/03/punishing-children-houses-of-refuge-juvenile-justice/) . The New York Public Library has a wonderful collection of [ images of the The Refuge ](https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/search/index?&keywords=house+of+refuge#) . The _History of Poverty and Homelessness in NYC_ webpage has a [ wonderful article ](http://povertyhistory.org/era/nineteenth/#house-of-refuge) on The Refuge. [ Newsiessquare ](https://newsiesquare.tumblr.com/post/177771446430/did-snyder-the-spyder-and-the-refuge-actually) has a good post about The Refuge as well, and I credit their post for the idea about swimming that was in Katherine’s head. I wasn’t able to find an exact population for The Refuge in 1900, so Katherine’s estimate is just an educated guess. There were fewer numbers of children in 1900 than there had been in, say, the 1860s (when there were something like 1300 children), but The Refuge didn’t close until 1935, and they didn’t move the girls to a separate institution until 1901.

6\. I should say that nothing Collins does in his running of The Refuge is backed up by any historical account of a specific warden. Collins' philosophy is based much more in current child psychology (which of course didn’t exist at the time, so he would be working off of his own observations and experience), but also Progressive Era reform ideas about the environment being the major factor in shaping people's characters. Cleanliness and order was considered important, as was the absence of corporal punishment and an emphasis on understanding the reasons for a child’s behavior. Collins’ schedule for the children is also more generous than those of earlier wardens - the article from the _History of Poverty and Homelessness_ website says that children at The Refuge only used to spend two hours at school, and the rest of the day working. Collins is trying to change the emphasis to schooling, and also not overwork the children, which is one of the repeated complaints during the Refuge's actual history. This is also why he is so careful to schedule in breaks and social time. In other words, I have tried to make Collins a highly progressive warden, and create as much contrast between him and Snyder as possible. I am not currently near my bookcase, as I am traveling, but references that come to mind for ideas about children and their environment in the Progressive Era include _Regina Kunzel, Fallen Women, Problem Girls: Unmarried Mothers and the Professionalization of Social Work, 1890-1945_ , and Mary Odem, _Delinquent Daughters: Protecting and Policing Adolescent Female Sexuality in the United States, 1885-1920_ . I believe Steven Mintz also talks about this in _Huck’s Raft_ , and chapters in _American Home Life 1880-1930_ , ed. Jessica Foy and Thomas Schlereth, and _Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age_ by Daniel Rogers touch on it as well.

7\. Eugenia’s comment about getting a scholarship to one of the New York high schools is historically accurate. Most “public” high schools in 1900 were not free, and students either had to pay tuition or earn a scholarship. High schools were also dominated by girls, since boys could get jobs in unskilled labor (or work full-time on a farm) by the time they would have gone to high school. Girls, on the other hand, went to high school because teaching was considered a respectable profession for a woman before she got married, and because sending daughters to high school became a mark of achieving middle-class status for many families. High schools were about seventy percent women at the turn of the twentieth century. Jane Hunter does excellent work on this topic in _How Young Ladies Became Girls: The Victorian Origins of American Girlhood_.


End file.
